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COOPKRSTO^'X ST.Y. 



THE 



CORNER-STONE, 



OE 



A FAMILIAR ILLUSTRATION OF THE PRINCIPLES 



OF 



CHRISTIAN TRUTH. 



Jesus Christ himself being the chief Corner Stone 



BY JACOB ABBOTT. 

AUTHOR OP 'THE YOUNG CHRISTIAN,' AND 'THE TEACHER. 



COOPERSTOWN: 
PUBLISHED BY H. & E. PHINNEY. 

1845. 



The Library 
of Congress 

WASHINGTON 



^ 



^ 6 



Copjnight secured according to the Act of Congress. 



PREFACE. 

The following work is intended to be, in some 
sense, the counterpart to the " Young Christian; " that 
having exhibited the first principles of Christian duty, 
and this on the other hand developing the elements of 
religious truth. 

The experienced Christian must not look here for 
additions to his stock of religious knowledge. If I had 
had any new and peculiar views of any portion of divine 
truth, I should not have brought them forward in this 
volume; for it is the elements only of Christianity, which 
I mean here to teach. It is not my aim to advance the 
science of theology, but to disseminate its acknowledged 
principles; and I have endeavored to exhibit them sim- 
ply as they are taught in the New Testament, and as 
they have been understood by the great body of Chris- 
tians in every age. 

There has been, it must )e admitted, and there still 
continues to be, some controversy on the subjects 
treated in this volume; and how far what I have said 
may be acceptable to different classes of Christians, I 
do not know. I should suppose it would meet with 



4 PREFACE. 

decided opposition, from some, were it not that I have 
often been surprised to see how Christians, who have 
been considered as entertaining views apparently the 
most diverse, will come together on a simple exhibition 
of the gospel, when it is not urged in a tone of challenge 
and defiance. A heated controversy drives men to 
such extremes in their expressions, that a calm by- 
stander cannot easily tell what they really do believe. 
Should any persons, however, find anything in this vol- 
ume to disapprove, I trust they will do me the justice 
to admit, that I have made this exhibition of the gospel, 
with reference to its moral effect on human hearts, and 
not for the purpose of taking sides in a controversy be- 
tween different parties of Christians. 

The work is not intended to contain a complete sys- 
tem of religious truth. Like the "Young Christian," 
it is designed to be only one excursion into a field which 
is almost boundless; and in our progress through it, I 
call the attention of those who accompany me, to such 
objects, and to such moral scenery, as naturally come 
in our way. A system of theology is a map or a plan, 
in which every feature of the country must be laid down 
in its proper place and proportion ; this work is on the 
other hand a series of views, as the traveller sees them 
in passing over a certain road. In this case, the road 
which I have taken, leads indeed through the heart of 
the country, but it does not by any means bring to view 
all which is interesting or important. 



PREFACE. 5 

The reader will perceive that the history of Jesus 
Christ is the clue which I have endeavored to follow ; 
that is, the work is intended to exhibit religious truth 
as it is connected with the various events, in the life 
of our Savior. In first introducing him to the scene, 
I consider his exalted nature as the Great Moral 
Manifestation of the Divinity to us. Then fol- 
lows a view of his Personal Character, and of his 
views of Religious Duty. From this last subject we 
turn aside a little to consider the general Conduct of 
Mankind, its Consequences, and the principles on 
which these consequences can be averted by Pardon; 
md then we return again to the history of the Savior, 
— to the scenes at the Last Supper, and at the 
Crucifixion. His Parting Command, and Part- 
ing Promise, bring us to the Conclusion of the 
volume. 

1* 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I.— THE DEITY. 

Address to the reader. Preparation of the heart. The caravan 
Ni^hl. The lost child. An anxious search. Jerusalem at even 
iug! The temple. The boy found. The question and reply 
Mary's feelings towards her son. His appearance, and character 
He stands alone. The Deity. Survey of the Universe. Tht 
proper station. The sun. The moon. Jupiter; his satellites. 
Distance. Exact regularity. The celestial clock. Sirius. The 
Panorama of the Universe. Childish illusion. No visible Deity. 
The Spirit; seen only in his works. Various manifestations. Un- 
worthy conceptions of God. Exhibitions of power; love; benev- 
olence"; skill. Moral character displayed in Jesus Christ. 

Studying God's character. Practical considerations. His works 
examined. An experiment. The ripe apple's stem. Juices. 
Bells. The vine and its tendrils. Contraction. The dew drop 
Its supports. Highly finished work. Water. The fleecy cloud. 
Snow storms and snow Hakes. Perfect workmanship. The bub- 
ble. Its structure. Us wonderful mechanism. Intellectual and 
moral exhibitions. An imaginary walk in June. God is love 
The robin and his nest. God's care of him. The pair. The 
scene changed. January. Plans for protection. The winter 
home. The Chrysalis. The ant. God a father. A magistrate 
too. System. Firmness and decision. The suffering chikb Its 
mother/ Physical law sustained. God's determined decision 
General laws". Moral law. The wretched dwelling. The inte- 
rior. Misery. The fader's return. Unpunished guilt, and suf- 
fering innocence. Penalties. Language of the Bible. Leading 
traits of the Divine character. Second manifestation. The Holy 
Spirit. Contrasts of character. Influences of the Spirit. Testi- 
mony of the Bible; of witnesses. United testimony. The Son. 
Seeing face to face. Studying God's character. True mode. 
Approaching the Deity. Access by Jesus Christ. Conclusion. 13 

CHAPTER II.— THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 

The Savior's first words. His last words. Perfection. Common 
illusion. Real claims of Christianity. Mahometanism. Pagan- 
ism. The worldly man. His character and habits. Seriousness. 
He is changed. One kind of religion. His great business. His 
final account. Consequences. Samuel's business. How a child 
may imitate the Savior. The glory of God. Acting as a stew- 
ard. Woildlincss. Love of furniture. Dress. The work of 
God. Low pursuits. The arts and refinements of life. The en- 
joyments of life. 

The Savior's character. Energy. Mildness and forbearance. His 
story of the Samaritan. His rejection at Samaria. Plans. Bold - 
and systematic action. His personal boldness. Nights of prayer. 
Style of speaking. Sermon on the Mount. The assembly. His 
missionaries. Results. Key to his character. Courage. The 
night in the garden. Suffering. Lights and weapons and armed 
men. Real courage. Three great traits. Love of nature. Kirk 
White. The Savior's metaphors. The lily. Insensibility of men. 
The garden. Its wonders. The Savior's taste and sensibility. 
His mode of addressing men. Moral sympathy. Reasoning. He 
loved his friends. He loved his mother. Proof. Filial affection. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER III.— HUMAN DUTY, OR THE SAVIOR'S MESSAG 
TO MANKIND. 

A difference between the gospels and the epistles. Wrong way to 
read the Bible. Right way. The schoolhonse. A stormy night. 
Trouble. The lost cap. Conversation. The Teacher's perplexity. 
The plan formed. Penitence necessary before forgiveness. Dis- 
tinction illustrated. A dialogue. Forgiveness of Joseph. The 
Teacher's walk. Effect on the boys. Joseph. The Teacher's 
return. Moral effect of Christ's sufferings. Essentials. The 
penitent child. The shipwrecked minister. The savages. Con- 
science, the universal monitor. Duty plain. John the Baptist. 
Jonah. Voice of conscience. Personal duty plain, though univer- 
sally neglected. 

God's design in the creation. The tec commandments. Analysis of 
the moral law. Its character. Effects of obedience to it. Spir- 
itual obedience to it. The Priest and the Levite. Various ways 
of beginning to obey. The absent master. The disobedient boys. 
Expostulation. How to begin. Giving cold water. Holiness is 
submission. Various forms of piety. The conversion of a little 
child. Spiritual darkness. The way to remove it. The various 
ways of turning to God. Forms and ceremonies. Do this. Prac- 
tice of the Apostles. Forms of worship. Example of Christ. 
Changes necessary. Common err6r. One great denomination. 
Disastrous results. Christ's sufferings. 71 

CHAPTER IV.— HUMAN NATURE, OR THE SAVIOR'S RECEP- 
TION AMONG MANKIND. 

Human nature. The way to study it. The village. Morning. The 
wile and mother. Industry. Benevolence. Exceptions rare. 
Moral beauty. Night. The sick child. The proposal. Watch- 
fulness. Moral beauty. Human virtue. Its two foundations. 
The village examined. Real characters. The post office. Appa- 
rent virtue. A distinction. No real difference of opinion about 
human character. Alienation from God: settled and universal. 
Evidences. Use of God's name. False religions. Mint, anise 
and cummin. 

The door of salvation open. Men will not enter. Insincerity among 
Christians. Open vice and crime. Salvation offered to children. 
Its reception. The little child. The wealthy merchant. The 
message to him. Enmity against God. The amiable girl. Appa- 
rent attention. Real indifference. Almost a Christian. Univer- 
sal alienation from God. Dead in trespasses and sins. The real 
difficulty. Spiritual blindness. The ungrateful child. The dia- 
logue. Ingratitude. Moral insensibility. Spiritual blindness. 
The horse and his rider. Insensibility. The common case. 
Scene at evening. Feelings. 

The Soliloquy. Wandering thoughts. Reveries. The confession. 
The cold, formal prayer. Effect of sickness and suffering. The 
sick man. A visit. Conversation by the way The unfeeling 
heart. Consumption. Hopeless condition. 96 

CHAPTER V.— PUNISHMENT, OR THE CONSEQUENCES OF 
HUMAN GUILT. 

Character of the Deity. Efficiency in government. Different es- 
timates of it. Severe punishment. Necessity for it. Alternative. 
Consequences of yielding to crime. Public sentiment. Petitions. 
Public sentiment now. Impartiality. Opinions influenced by 
character Points illustrated. Time spent in sin. Fifteen sec- 






CONTENTS. 9 

onds. Bad intentions. Immediate consequences. Inconsiderate- 
ness. Object of punishment. Not avenge. Moral impression. 
The petition. Satisfying justice. Dr. Johnson. Salvation by 
Christ. Penitence. Its power in averting punishment. It makes 
pardon desirable. 

Application of principles. Nature and effects of sin. Cockfighting. 
War. Spiritual blindness. Human insensibility to sin. Threat- 
ened destruction. The alternative. Open unbelief. Indifference. 
Mistaken views. The guilt of sinning against God. Case of the 
child. The spread of sin must be stopped. Sin overruled for 
good. The forgery. Its beneficial effects. Moral impression. 
The authority of law sustained. Good often done by the commis- 
sion and the "punishment of sin. Difficulty. Divine power over 
the human heart. The traveller. Spirit of controversy. God is 
to be feared. The Savior. Insensibility to God's threatened 
judgments. A form of unbelief. Christians should be affected by 
it. Probation. Debt and credit. 

The young man. Leaving home. Allurements of sin. The Crisis. 
The sore temptation and the struggle. Results depending. Con- 
sequences of a defeat. Probation. Nature of it. Sin perpetu- 
ates itself. Its worst effects. Wandering from God. Can the sin- 
ner return? Will the sinner return 1 ! God often employs suffering. 
Arrangements for it in the human frame. Uses of suffering. Jehovah 
is to be feared. Value of an efficient government. Conclusion. 122 

CHAPTER VT.— PARDON, OR CONSEQUENCES SAVED. 

Pardon possible. Always desirable when it is safe. The story of 
the lost cap. The Teacher's motives. Cases common. Not pre- 
cisely analogous to the plan of salvation. The broken stucco. 
Suffering of the innocent for the guilty. Effects of the substitution. 
The principle often applied. Another case. The students and the 
joiners. Mischief. The proposed substitution. Its effects. Moral 
impression. Peculiarities of the case. The offenders not peni- 
tent. Favors received for Christ's sake. Illustration. Political 
governments. Differences. No forgiveness provided for by human 
laws. Two motives for punishment. Their operation in this case. 
Substitute for punishment. The father's plan. Visit to the poor- 
house. The scene. The abandoned. Consequences of truancy. 

Moral impression made by the death of Christ. Extent and power 
of it undeniable. Its present influence. Its prospective influence. 
Necessity of atonement. Sacrifices. Preparation required. Sin- 
cere repentance. Principles of moral government. 

Application of the subject. Address to the inquirer. Source* of 
anxiety. Remedy. Anxiety needless. Redemption fully pur- 
chased. Faith necessary. Difference between faith and belief. 
The electric machine. Christian faith. Doubts and fears. The 
way to find peace. Justified by the law. Lasting effects of sin 
Example. The sinning child. Change in his moral position. 
Justification. Peace of conscious rectitude. Peace of forgiveness. 
Joys of forgiveness. The sting of sin. Their permanence. A 
wounded spirit. The way to find peace. The Savior. Peace and 
pardon. Penitence essential to pardon. Peace deferred. John 
Bunyan's view. Christian at the Cross. The way to remove the 
burden. Come to the Savior. 152 

CHAPTER VII.— THE LAST SUPPER. 

Plan of this work. Analysis of preceding chapters. The last supper* 
Jerusalem. Supposed feelings of the populace. The last passover. 
Moral greatness of the occasion The meeting. Anxiety and sadness. 



10 CONTENTS. 

p he Savior's religious instruction. He pressed duty first. Nico- 
demus. Theories of regeneration. The occasion. Topics now 
brought forward. Free conversation. Truths adduced. His 
testimony respecting himself. Philip's question. The way to 
approach the Deity. Moral dependence. Ye have not chosen me. 
The vine and the branches. Union with Christ. The Comforter. 
His work upon human hearts. The disciple's question. The 
prayer. Eternal life a gift. God's claim often resisted. The 
happiness of yielding to it. Feeling of dependence safe: happy. 
Religious experience. Trust in God. Physical danger. The 
safe refuge. Other truths. Evidences of piety. Fruits. Com- 
mon errors. Two errors. Abundance of talk. Insincerity. 
Party spirit in religion. Its mture. Its spirit. Its effects. True 
fruits of piety. The catalogue. Love. Joy. Peace. Long-suffer- 
ing. Gentleness. Goodness. Faith. Meekness. Temperance. 

Hher occurrences at the interview. The Lord's supper. The Sa- 
vior's view of ceremonies. Forms and feelings. Baptism. The 
rainbow. Ceremonies symbolical. Monuments. A contrast. 
The pyramids and the Lord's supper. Test of sincerity. Exact 
obedience. The father's two directions. Principles of compliance. 
Ceremonies of false and true religions. Meaning of 'Do this.' 
Circumstances excluded. Principles. Moral effect to be secured. 
No dispute on this subject. Principles universally applicable. 
Formalists. No denomination free. Liberality. 
Difference of opinion unavoidable. Case supposed. Wine of Pales- 
tine. Each church must judge for itself. Modes of ordination. 
Admission to die church. True intolerance. Practical applica- 
tion. Weak and sickly Christians. Directions, The sickly Chris- 
tian. Preparatory lecture. Communion day. Feelings at the com- 
munion table. Its true design. Its proper effects. Examination. 
Confession. Reunion. Partaking unworthily. Guilt and conse- 
quences of it. Lukewarm Christians. The sad alternative. The 
Savior's farewell Hymn. 183 

CHAPTER Vni.— THE CRUCIFIERS. 

Dramatic interest of the narrative of the crucifixion. Its moral 
effect often lost. Three stages of guilt. First stage; guilty feel- 
ing. Second stage; guilty intentions. Third stage ; guilty action. 
Illustrations. Sudden acts. God's view of guilt. Difference 
between divine and human laws. Consequences no criterion of 
guilt. The murderer. The feelings of the heart and external 
conduct. The Lady. The rude boy. Application of these princi- 
ples. The characters of the crucifiers. Their characters common. 

Judas Iscariot. His p.'obable character and plans. Trust conferred 
upon him. His present followers. The church. Various ways 
of betraying Christ's cause. The worldly pastor. The merchant. 
The probaf V intentions of Judas. Judas' excuses. The midnight 
scene. Jerusalem. The valley. The garden. The coming forth 
of the soldiers. Apparent discrepancy. The two accounts. Fear- 
lessness of truth. Explanation. The encounter. Resistance. 
Binding the prisoner. Jesus before the Priests. Their two 
charges. Blasphemy. 

Political condition of the Jews. Capital punishment. The Roman 
Governor. His hall. The Priests remain in the street. Another 
apparent discrepancy. Truth and fabrication. Explanation. 
Judas and the Priests compared. The spirit of the Priests. Con- 
tention among denominations. 

Peter. His appearance at the hall. Character of Peter and John. 
Peter's sin very common. His temptations compared with ours* 



CONTENTS 11 

Denying Christ at the present day. The narrative resumed. 
Characters of the parties. The dialogue in the street. Charge of 
treason. Pilate and the Savior in the hail. Pilate's efforts. His 
inquiries. His plan for avoiding a decision. Herod. The Sa- 
vior's silence. Another plan. Barabbas called for. The excite- 
ment. P.iate'd perplexity. The scourging. One more appeal 
to the Savior's enemies. The decision. Character of Pontius 
Pilate. The soldiers. Sinning in the way of business. Various 
characters exhibited at the cross. His numerous friends. 
Crucifixion. Inflammation. Thirst. Suffering. Death. The sol- 
diers' visit at sunset. The body taken down. The disciples. 
Moral effect of the scene. 220 



CHAPTER IX.— THE PARTING COMMAND, OR THE MEANS 
OF SPREADING THE GOSPEL. 

Plan of the work. Human life. Anticipated happiness. What 
have I to live fori The work of a Christian. The Christian's 
work. Means of doing it. 
l. Holy life. Two kinds of influence. The salt of the earth. Duties 
to ourselves. Common danger. Looking to others. Watching one's 
self. Common way of evading duty. Influence of personal holiness. 
Influence of action. Double motives. Bad principles cultivated 
by religious acts. Influence of the heart greater than that of the 
conduct. Holy example. Unholy example. The latter common. 
n. Personal influence. Its value as a means of doing good. The 
contrast. Repulsive piety. Its bad influence. The fault gener- 
ally incurable. Unsound logic. Supposed want of influence. 
Extent and power of influence. The chief magistrate. The two 
6isters. Mutual influence. Powerful but not extensive. The 
child and his little brother. None too young to do good. Influ- 
ence over brothers and sisters. Every Christian has an influence. 
Effect, of universal fidelity. Future spread of the gospel. The 
church the pillar of the truth. 
in. Study of human nature. Mistakes often made. Example of 
Paul. His preaching. Mistakes of Christians. Guides in the 
study. The Bible. Observation. Books. Theories. Theolog- 
ical notions. Want of skill. Careful study necessary. 
IV. Use of property. Claims of Christianity. Common question. 
Case supposed. The rude Islanders. Ways of reaching them. Vari- 
ous plans. Co-operation. Money. Its nature as a means of uuing 
good. Examples of its power. Radiant points of piety. Sincere 
motives. Piety begins at home. Success certain. Important trust 
committed to Christians. Sublimity of the Christian's work. 
v. Religious discussion. Written defences of Christianity. Early 
associations. Instances. Religious antipathies; beyond the reach 
of argument. Opinions hereditary. Irreligion the cause of error. 
One great distinction. Influence of feelings. Instances. The 
contention. The consumptive patient. Bias in religion. Sourc- 
es of bias. .Remedies. Inefficacy of argument. Hard to ac- 
knowledge error. The remedy. Useless disputes. Language 
misunderstood. Human character. Nature of disputes about it. 
Misunderstanding. Dispute grounded on misunderstanding. Am- 
biguity of common words. Proposed question and dispute arising 
from it. Unimportant questions. Pride and self-conceit. The 
limited powers of the human mind. Fruitlessness of controversies. 
The test of the truth. Sin a disease. Efficacy of remedies. 
Moral power of the truth The means of propagating it. 258 



12 CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER X —THE PARTING PROMISE, OR THE INFLUENCES 
OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

The command and the promise. The Savior's presence. Proofs of 
it. Saul. Difficulties of the subject. Subject obscure. Plausi- 
ble reasoning not to be relied upon. Ambiguity of language. 
Facts are plain ; the theory obscure. Moral dependence on God. 
Waiting for the Spirit. The man with a withered hand. Faults 
and errors. We must be born again. Influences of the Spirit. 
Various effects. The narrative. Such cases common. 

A NewEngla'id College. The buildings. The classes. The first day. 
Temptations. Varieties of character. Dangers. The progress of 
sin. Efforts to reclaim a wanderer. Daily college life. Morning. 
The prayer bell. Morning prayers. Recitations. The break- 
fast hrur. Study hours. The idle and negligent. The afternoon. 
Evening. College mischief. Frequent consequences. Efforts of 
the officers. Their fruitlessness. Amherst College in April 1827. 

A student. Letter to the author. Writer's account of the condition 
of the college. Animosities and irregularities. The President's 
efforts. Their success. Attention arrested. Interest at the chap- 
el. Impression. Singular plan adopted by the students. The 
evening meeting. The intruders. An enemy turned to a friend. 
A strange assembly. Success of a bad design. The Hebrew 
Bible. The President's visit to the awakened student. The 
mother. Her son's letters. The Christian mother's encourage- 
ment. Suspense relieved. The young convert's narrative. Nar- 
rative continued. Narrative concluded 

Marks of genuine feeling. Religious meetings. The recitation 
room. The circles for prayer. The Tuesday evening meeting. 
Solemnity. Sincere and honest feeling. The sermon. The hymn. 
Religious character of the converts. These changes the work of 
God. Witnessed by thousands. Counterfeits. Influences of the 
Spirit. The Comforter. 305 

CHAPTER XL— THE CONCLUSION. 

Various classes of readers. Address to the few. Very few really 
accessible. " I wish I were a Christian." Two great principles 
of duty; universal and unquestionable. Some pleasure in sin. 
Sin prefpTed. Supposed desire for piety. Influence of a religious 
book. First ground of error. The thoughtful young man. Con- 
science; recollections; fears. Soothing influence of a good inten- 
tion. Loving the rewards of piety. Loving piety itself. Influ- 
ence of fear. Undefined fears. Fear of consequences proper. 
Desire of happiness. Second form of false interest in religion. 
The evening walk. The ocean. Night. Clouds. Stars. Poetic 
feeling. The romance of religion. Holiness. These feelings not 
wrong; only insufficient of themselves. Wishing to be a Chris- 
tian. Difficulties removed. Discrimination. Common errors. 

To the Reader. Various directions to a new convert. Openness. 
Humility. Metaphysical difficulties. The precise time of conver- 
sion. The first great duty. Excellences of outward life. Regu- 
lation of the conduct. The feelings towards others. Formation 
of opinions. Independence. Modesty. Limits to human know- 
ledge. Progress. Pressing forward. Trust iu the Savior. 
Jesus Christ the chief Corner-stone. 338 



THE 



CORNER-STONE. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE DEITY. 
" The glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." 

Address to the reader. Preparation of the heart. 

"If any man will do his will, he shall know of the 
doctrine;" so said the Saviour, and the obvious infer- 
ence from it is, that we are to act up to the light we 
have, before we seek for more. Reader, are you doing 
God's will ? This book is intended to explain such of 
the elementary principles of the gospel of Christ, as are 
necessary to supply the most pressing wants of a human 
soul hungering and thirsting after righteousness, and this 
gospel, the Bible assures us, cannot be understood, unless 
the heart is willing to comply with its claims. If you 
have not confessed your sins therefore, and asked for- 
giveness, — if you do not habitually strive against tempt- 
ation, seeking help from above, — if you do not aim at 
doing the will of God in your daily pursuits, I do ear- 
nestly advise you to go to God before you proceed far- 
ther, and implore his forgiveness for the past, and in the 
most solemn and emphatic manner, commit yourself to 
him for the future. Whatever difficulties in your mind 
hang around the subjects connected with religious truth, 
you certainly know enough to see that this is a duty, 
and you cannot neglect or postpone obedience with- 
out doing violence to conscience, and displeasing God. 
2 



14 THE CORNER-STONE [Ch. 1., 

The Caravan. Night. The lost child. An anxious search. 

Do it then, before you proceed any farther. You will 
then have God's guidance and assistance as you go on. 
You will be preserved from error and led into the truth. 
Your heart being opened, the instruction which this 
volume may present, will enter into it, and contribute to 
its improvement and happiness. But it will do no good 
to heap up the truth before a door which is securely 
barred against what is already there. 

Some centuries ago, a large, a very large company 
were travelling northwardly in early summer, through a 
lovely country, whose hills and valleys were clothed with 
the fig-tree, the olive, and the vine. They journeyed 
slowly and without anxiety or care, for their route lay 
through a quiet land, the abode of peace and plenty. 
Friends and acquaintances were mingled together in 
groups, as accident or inclination might dictate, until 
the sun went down, and the approach of evening warned 
them to make preparations for rest. While the various 
families were drawing off together for this purpose, the 
attention and the sympathy of the multitude were excited 
by the anxious looks and eager inquiries of a female, 
who was passing from group to group, with sorrow and 
agitation painted on her countenance. It was a mother, 
who could not find her son. It was her only son, and 
one to whom, from peculiar circumstances, she was very 
strongly attached. He had never disobeyed her; — he 
had never given her unnecessary trouble, and the un- 
common maturity of his mental and moral powers had 
probably led her to trust him much more to himself than 
in any other case would be justifiable. He was twelve 
years old, and she supposed that he had been safe in the 
company, but now night had come, and she could not 
find him. She went anxiously and sorrowfully from fam- 
ily to family, and from friend to friend, inquiring with 
deep solicitude, " Have you seen my son?" 



Ch. 1.] THE DEITY. 15 

Jerusalem at evening. The temple. The boy found. 

He was not to be found. No one had seen him, and 
the anxious parents left their company, and inquiring 
carefully by the way, went slowly back to the city 
whence they had come. 

The city was in the midst of a country of mountains 
and valleys. Dark groves upon the summits crowned 
the richly cultivated fields which adorned their sides. 
The road wound along the glens and vales, sharing the 
passage with the streams, which flowed towards a neigh- 
boring sea. The city itself spread its edifices over the 
broad surface of a hill, one extremity of which was 
crowned with the spacious walls and colonnades of a 
temple, rising one above another, the whole pile beaming 
probably in the setting sun, as these anxious parents 
approached it, in all the dazzling whiteness of marble 
and splendor of gold. The parents however could not 
have thought much of the scene before them. They 
had lost their son. 

With what anxious and fruitless search they spent the 
evening and the following morning, we do not know. 
They at last however ascended to the temple itself. 
They passed from court to court, now going up the 
broad flight of steps which led from one to the other, 
now walking under a lofty colonnade, and now travers- 
ing a paved and ornamented area. At last in a public 
part of this edifice, they found a group collected around 
a boy, and apparently listening to what he was saying; 
the feeling nrust have been mingled interest, curiosity 
and surprise. It was their son. His uncommon mental 
and moral maturity had by some means shown itself to 
those around him, and they were deeply interested in his 
questions and replies. 

His mother, for the narrative, true to nature and to 
fact, makes the mother the foremost parent in every thing 
connected with the search for their son, does not re- 
proach him. She could not reproach one who had been 



16 








THE 


CORNER-STONE. 




[Ch. 


1, 


The 


question 


and 


reply. 




Mary's feeli 


nga 


towards her 


son. 



such a son. She asked him why he had staid behind, 
and gently reminded him of the sorrow and suffering he 
had caused them. He gave them a reply which she 
could not fully understand, and the feelings with which 
twelve years of intercourse, such as no mother ever 
before had with a son, had inspired her for him, forbade 
her pressing him for an explanation. " She laid his 
words up in her heart.'''' 

With what a strange mixture of affection and wonder, 
and ardent but respectful regard, must the mother of 
Jesus have habitually looked upon her son. A boy who 
had never spoken an impatient or disrespectful word, who 
had never manifested an unkind or a selfish feeling, who 
had never disobeyed, never failed in his duty, but had, 
for twelve long years, never given father or mother an 
unnecessary step, or a moment's uneasiness, or neglect- 
ed any thing which could give them pleasure. My 
reader, are you still under your father's roof? If so, try 
the experiment of doing in every respect for a single 
week, your duty to father and mother; fill your heart 
with kindness and love to them, and let your words and 
your actions be in all respects controlled by these feel- 
ings ; — be the disinterested and untiring friend and 
helper of your little brothers and sisters; — in a word, do 
your whole duty, in the family of which you form a part, 
making filial affection and respect the evident spring, 
and you will fill a mother's heart with gladness at the 
change. You can then a little understand the deep tide 
of enjoyment, which must have filled Mary's heart, 
during the childhood of her spotless son. 

What, too, must have been the progress of his mind, 
in knowledge and wisdom. A mind, never allured away 
by folly, or impeded by idleness, or deranged by passion. 
Conceive of a frame too, which no guilty indulgence of 
appetite or propensity had impaired, and a countenance 
which was bright with its expression of intelligence and 



Ch. 1.] THE DEITY. 17 

His appearance, and character. He stands alone. The Deity. 

energy, and yet beaming with kindness and love. It 
was the perfection of human nature, the carrying out to 
its limit, of all which God originally intended in the 
creation of man. And why was it so ? How has it hap- 
pened, that among the millions upon millions of children 
who have by disobedience, ingratitude and sin, planted 
thorns in their mothers' pillows, and often thrown sadness 
about the circle in which they moved, this boy had been 
the only spotless one? How is it, that he alone had 
walked in purity, — that he alone had never sinned, never 
sought selfishly his own, never given a parent pain, 
never injured a playmate, or returned an impatient word, 
or struck a blow in anger, or harbored a feeling of 
revenge? He stands a glorious monument of perfect 
filial virtue, the more glorious because it is solitary. 
No other nation or kindred or people or clime, ever 
furnished such a case, or pretended to furnish one. It 
is remarkable that among all the endless fables and pre- 
tensions of ancient times, no historian or mythologist, no 
priest or prophet or philosopher has ever pretended to 
have found a spotless man. The whole world withdraws 
its pretensions. Every system of religion, and every 
school of philosophy stand back from this field, and 
leave Jesus Christ alone, the solitary example of perfect 
moral purity, in the midst of a world lying in sin. The 
motto of our chapter contains the only explanation. It 
is"the glory of God in the face of Jesus Chrlst." 

Almost all young persons are lost and confounded in 
attempting to obtain any clear conceptions of the Deity, 
or rather I should say, they are embarrassed and per- 
plexed by many false and absurd impressions, which 
come up with them from childhood, and which cling to 
them very obstinately in riper years. Let us turn away 
then a short time from the history of the child Jesus, 
that we may look a little into this subject. It is not an 
easy one It will require patient thought and close 

2* 



18 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 1 

Survey of the Universe. The proper station. The sun. 

attention. You ought to pause from time to time, as 
you read the following paragraphs, to look within and 
around you, and to send forth your conceptions far away 
in the regions into which I shall attempt to guide them. 
And ahove all remember that if ever you need divine 
assistance, it is when you attempt to look into the nature 
and character of that Power which is the origin and the 
support of all other existence. 

In the first place, let us take a survey of the visible 
universe, that we may see what manifestations of God 
appear in it. Let us imagine that we can see with the 
naked eye all that the telescope would show us, and 
then in order that we may obtain an uninterrupted view, 
let us leave this earth, and ascending from its surface, 
take a station where we can look, without obstruction, 
upon all around. As we rise above the summits of the 
loftiest mountains, the bright and verdant regions of the 
earth begin to grow dim. City after city, and stream 
after stream fade away from view, and at length we 
see the whole earth itself rolling away on its course, 
and reflecting from its surface a uniform and silvery 
light. As the last breath of its atmosphere draws off 
from us, it leaves us in the midst of universal night, with 
a sky extending without interruption all around us,, and 
bringing out to our view in every possible direction, 
innumerable and interminable vistas of stars. They 
grow fainter and fainter in the distance, till they are lost 
in measureless regions, too remote to be seen, but which 
are still as full and as brilliant as those which are near. 
In one quarter of the heavens, we do indeed see the sun, 
shining in all his splendor but as there is no atmosphere 
around us to reflect his rays, they produce no general 
illumination, and the dazzling splendor of his disk beams 
out from a dark nocturnal sky. The stars beyond him, 
bright and faint, as they are nearer or more distant, send 
to us their beams entirely unobstructed by his rays. 



Ch. 1.] THE DEITY. 19 

The moon. Jupiter; his satellites. Distance. 

We have thus the whole visible universe open to our 
view, so far as telescopic vision will carry us into its re- 
moter regions. Let us look at it in detail. 

Do you see yon moon-like looking planet, gliding al- 
most imperceptibly towards us on its way ? From that 
portion of its surface which is turned towards the sun, it 
reflects to us a silvery light, while the rest of its form is 
in shadow and unseen. As it approaches us it enlarges 
and swells until it fills the whole quarter of the sky 
whence it comes. Its illuminated surface is turned more 
and more from us as it passes between us and the sun, 
and as it wheels majestically by us, we see, dimly in- 
deed, for we look upon its shaded side, broadly extended 
regions crowded with life and vegetation. The mighty 
mass however passes on; a bright line of light begins to 
creep in upon its western limb. The darkened surface 
gradually fades from our view, and we soon see nothing 
but the shining crescent, which dwindles to a point, as 
this mighty world of life, covered with verdure, and 
thronged with population, wheels away and takes its 
place among the stars of the evening sky, itself soon the 
faintest star of all. 

In another quarter of the heavens, we see a larger 
planet, whose surface it would take the swiftest human 
traveller hundreds of years merely to explore; but it 
beams mildly upon us from its distant orbit, a little gilded 
ball. 

There are four bright points in the. sky near it; two 
on each side, so minute as to be almost invisible, and yet 
shining with a clear and steady light, except when in 
their regular revolution round their parent orb, they 
disappear behind him, or are lost in his shadow. The 
whole group, the moons and the mighty mass around 
which they revolve, sweep on in their annual circuit 
with nearly the velocity of lightning, but in their almost 
measureless distance, their motion is to us so nearly im- 



20 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 1 

Exact regularity. The celestial clock. Sirius 

perceptible that we must watch them days or weeks to 
be satisfied that they move at all. 

Measureless distance, did I say? No. The Creator 
of this moving world has framed an intellect which has 
surveyed the bounds of its orbit. Its distance is meas- 
ured, and its mighty mass is weighed as accurately as 
any distance, or any weight can be ascertained; and 
human calculation will tell precisely what situation, at 
any instant, hundreds of years hence, the planet itself 
and every one of its satellites will have assumed. The 
maker of this machinery set it in motion at least six thou- 
sand years ago, and yet so precise, so unaltered and 
unalterable is the regularity with which he carries it on, 
that its motions are now the very standard of exactness 
among men. By these revolutions, an observer in the 
remotest lands finds what is the exact time at his distant 
home, and learns the very distance which separates him 
from it. It is in fact an illuminated clock which God 
has placed in the heavens, and whose motions he regu 
lates, so as to make it an unerring guide to man. 

Turn now to another quarter, and you see far, far 
beyond all that we have yet observed, a brilliant star, the 
brightest among all the constellations around. It is Si- 
rius; the fixed unaltered Sirius. He has been watched 
for ages, and gazed upon by ten thousand eyes, but no 
one has discovered in him the slightest motion or change. 
He keeps his precise place among the feebler compan- 
ions around him. His lustre never waxes nor wanes. 
No telescope will enlarge or alter him, or bring him 
nearer, and from two stations a hundred and ninety mil- 
lions of miles apart, he appears in the same place, and 
shines with the same brightness, and his unalterable 
beam comes apparently from the same direction. 

But inconceivably remote as this star is from us, we 
can see far, very far beyond him. The eye penetrates 
between him and those around, away into boundless re- 



, 



Ch. 1.] THE DEITY. 21 

The Panorama, of the Universe. Childish illusion. 

gions, where the vista stretches on from star to star, and 
from cluster to cluster, in endless perspective. The 
faint nebula is perhaps the most remote of all, whose dim 
and delicately penciled light, in the very remotest sky, is, 
every ray of it, the concentrated effulgence of a blazing 
sun, so inconceivably distant however, that their unite 
power can produce only the vision of a little faint cloud, 
apparently just ready to melt away and disappear. 

Such is the scene as it would present itself to an observ- 
er, who could escape for an hour from the obstructions to 
the view at the surface of the earth, and from the dim- 
ness and the reflections of our atmosphere. Our globe 
itself cuts off one half of the visible universe at all times, 
and the air spreads over us a deep canopy of blue, which 
during the day, shuts out entirely the other half. But 
were the field open, we should see in every direction the 
endless perspective of suns and stars as I have describ- 
ed them. And this too, all around us. Above and 
below, to the east and to the west, to the north and to 
the south. The conception of childhood,— and it is one 
which clings to us in maturer years, — that above the 
blue sky there is a heaven concealed, where the Deity 
sits enthroned, is a delusive one. God is everywhere. 
He has formed these worlds, these countless suns, and 
where we see his works, there we see his presence and 
agency. But the beautiful canopy above us does not 
conceal from us a material heaven beyond. We can ac- 
tually penetrate it, and see that there is no heaven there. 
The Deity is the all pervading power, which lives 
and acts throughout the whole. He is not a separate 
existence having a special habitation in a part of it. If 
we look in every direction through this magnificent 
scene, we behold proofs of the active presence of the 
Deity in it all, but there is no material temple, no throne, 
no monarch with visible tokens of majesty. In fact if 
there was any quarter of the universe more magnificent 



22 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 1. 

No visible Deity. The spirit ; seen only in his works. 

than the rest, with a visible potentate seated there wield- 
ing his sceptre, that visible potentate would not, could not 
be God. It must be a creation, not the universal, un- 
caused Creator. It might be a manifestation of the su- 
preme power, but it would not be, and could not be that 
power itself, which from its very nature is universal in its 
presence, and which consequently no limits and no place 
can confine. 

It will be observed by the reader, that I am speaking 
here of a heaven considered as the seat of government 
occupied by a visible Deity on a throne. That the fu- 
ture residence of the happy, will be a definite place, 
where extraordinary tokens of God's presence, and ex- 
traordinary manifestations of his power and glory will be 
seen, is highly probable. I am speaking only of concep- 
tions which make the Deify himself corporeal, not spirit- 
ual, assign him a special place, instead of regarding him 
as the great invisible spirit, every part of the wide uni- 
verse being equally his home. 

Banish then, for this is the object to which I have been 
in these paragraphs aiming, all material ideas of a Deity, 
and do not let your imagination struggle to find its way 
upwards to some material heaven, with indefinite and idle 
conceptions of a monarch seated on a throne. The strik- 
ing and beautiful metaphors of the Bible never were 
intended to give us this idea. God is a Spirit, it says 
in its most emphatic tone. A spirit; that is, he has no 
form, no place, no throne. Where he acts, there only 
can we see him. He is the wide spread omnipresent 
power, which is everywhere employed, — but which we 
can never see, and never know, except so far as he shall 
manifest himself by his doings. 

If we thus succeed in obtaining just conceptions of the 
Deity as the invisible and universal power, pervading all 
space, and existing in all time, we shall at once perceive 
that the only way by which he can make himself known 



Ch. 1.] THE DEITY 



Various manifestations. Unworthy conceptions of God. 

to his creatures, is by acting himself out, as it were, in his 
works; and of course the nature of the manifestation 
which is made will depend upon the. nature of the works. 
In the structure of a solar system, with its blazing centre 
and revolving worlds, the Deity, invisible itself, acts out 
its mighty power, and the unerring perfection of its in- 
tellectual skill. At the same time, while it is carrying 
on these mighty movements, it is exercising in a very 
different scene, its untiring industry, and unrivalled taste, 
in clothing a mighty forest with verdure, bringing out in 
beauty its millions of opening buds, and painting, by slow 
and cautious steps, the petal of every flower, and every 
insect's wing. And so everywhere this unseen and uni- 
versal Essence, acts out its various attributes, by its 
different works. We can learn its nature only by the 
character of the effects which spring from it. 

But I hear my reader say, " I cannot dispel the idea 
that there is above me, somewhere in the lofty sky, the 
peculiar residence of Jehovah, from which he puts forth, 
as it were, his arm, and produces all these effects in the 
more distant regions of his creation; and I cannot but 
hope that one day I shall see him there." 

See him there! What do you expect to see ? What 
can you see ? There is nothing but form and color which 
is visible to the human eye. And is the Deity form and 
color? No. Dispel these unworthy conceptions of God. 
Go out in the evening, and gaze up into the clear sky, 
till you realize that you can see away into those distant 
regions, far beyond the sphere which your childish im- 
agination has assigned as the residence of God. Then 
reflect that the whole scene which you thus gaze into, 
will, in a few hours, be beneath your feet. Try to dispel 
the illusion, and thoroughly fix in your mind, so that it 
shall never leave you, the conception that the Deity is 
the all-pervading, universal and invisible power. He is 
below, as much as he is above ; for if we could perforate 



24 THE CORNER-STONE. L 'Ch. 1 

Exhibitions of power; love; benevolence; skill. 

the earth, and look through to what is beneath our feet, 
we should find there as many worlds, as many blazing 
suns and shining stars, and as endless perspectives of 
brightness and beauty, all marking the presence and the 
agency of God, as we ever see above. 

This universal essence then, must display to us its na- 
ture, by acting itself out in a thousand places, by such 
manifestations of itself, as it wishes us to understand. 
Does God desire to impress us with the idea of his pow- 
er? He darts the lightning from cloud to cloud, — or 
rolls the thunder, — or shakes continents by his unseen 
hand. Does he wish to beam upon us in love? What 
can be more expressive than the sweet summer sunset 
and the thousand nameless tints and hues which give its 
expression of peace and happiness to the landscape, and 
air, and sky of evening. How can he make us acquaint- 
ed with his benevolence and skill? Why by acting them 
out in some mechanism which exhibits them. He may 
construct an eye, or a hand for man, filling them with 
ingenious contrivances for our benefit, so numerous, that 
the very being who uses them may be centuries in ex- 
ploring their mysterious wonders and yet not learn them 
all. How can he give us some conception of his intel- 
lectual powers? He can plan the motions of planets, 
and so exactly balance their opposing forces, that thou- 
sands of years shall not accumulate the slightest error, 
or disturb the unchanging precision of their way. But 
the great question, after all is to come. It is the one to 
which we have meant that all which we have been say- 
ing should ultimately tend. How can such a being ex- 
hibit the moral principle by which his mighty energies 
are all controlled? 

He is an unseen, universal power, utterly invisible to 
us, and imperceptible, except so far as he shall act out 
his attributes in what he does. Hoiv shall he act ovi 
moral principle? It is easy by his material creations, to 



Ch. 1.] THE DEITY. 85 

Moral character displayed in Jesus Christ. 

make any impression upon us, which material objects 
can make; but how shall he exhibit to us the moral beau- 
ty of justice, and benevolence, and mercy between man 
and man? How shall he exhibit to us clearly his desire 
that sorrow and suffering on earth should be mitigated, 
and injuries forgiven, and universal peace and good will 
reign among the members of this great family. Can he 
do this by the thunder, the lightning or the earthquake? 
Can he do it by the loveliness of the evening landscape, 
or the magnificence and splendor of countless suns and 
stars? No. He might declare his moral attributes as 
he might have declared his power; but if he would bring 
home to us the one, as vividly and distinctly as the other, 
he must act out his moral principles, by a- moral mani- 
festation, in a moral scene; and the great beauty of 
Christianity is, that it represents him as doing so. He 
brings out the purity, and spotlessness, and moral glory 
of the Divinity, through the workings of a human mind, 
called into existence for this purpose, and stationed in a 
most conspicuous attitude among men. In the movements 
of a planet we see the energy of the Deity in constant 
occupation, showing us such powers and principles as 
majestic motion can show, and in the moral movements 
of a mind, in which the energies of a Deity equally 
mingle, and which they equally guide, we have the far 
more important manifestation which the movements of 
thought and feeling can show. Without some direct 
manifestation of the Deity in the spiritual world, the dis- 
play of his character would be fatally incomplete, and it 
is a beautiful illustration of the more than harmony which 
exists between nature and revelation, that the latter does 
thus, in precise analogy, exactly complete what the for- 
mer had begun. Thus the moral perfections of divinity 
show themselves to us in the only way by which, so far 
as we can see, it is possible directly to show them, bv 
coming out in action, in the very field of human duty, by 
3 



26 THE CORNER-STONE. 


[Ch. 1. 


Studying God's character. 


His works examined. 



a mysterious union with a human intellect and human 
powers. It is God manifest in the flesh; the visible 
moral image of an all pervading moral Deity, himself for 
ever invisible. 

My object in this chapter, thus far, has been to show 
my readers, in what way, and on what principles they 
are to study the character of God. The substance of 
the view, which I have been wishing to impress upon 
your minds, is, that we are to expect to see him solely 
through the manifestations he makes of himself in his 
works. We have seen in what way some of the traits 
of his character are displayed in the visible creation, 
and how at last he determined to manifest his moral 
character, by bringing it into action through the medium 
of a human soul. The plan was carried into effect, and 
the mysterious person thus formed appears for the first 
time to our view, in the extraordinary boy, whom we left 
sitting in the temple, an object of wonder, which must 
have been almost boundless, since the power which was 
manifesting itself in him was unknown. We have now 
in the succeeding chapters of this book, to follow the 
circumstances and events of his remarkable history. 

Before we proceed however, we have a few things of 
a practical character to say, which are suggested by this 
subject. 

1. A young Christian may derive great advantage, and 
enjoy much pleasure in studying the character of God 
on the principles of this chapter. I do not mean by 
reading books on the subject, but by making your own 
observations and reflections upon the scene and the 
objects around you. There are certain highly wrought 
contrivances, such as the eye, and the hand, which were 
long since exhibited as proofs of divine wisdom, and they 
have been so exclusively dwelt upon by writers since, as 
almost to produce the impression upon those who read 



Ch. l.j THE DEITY. • 27 

An experiment. The ripe apple's steir. 

passively, that these are all, or certainly the chief indi- 
cations of divine wisdom. Whereas you cannot take a 
walk, or sit at an open window, without finding innume- 
rable examples as unequivocal as these. 

A young Lady of active mind, who was out of health, 
and forbidden by her physician to read or study, and 
who complained that she did not know how to employ her 
thoughts, was advised by a friend to take a walk, and 
see how many proofs of divine contrivance she could 
find. Such an experiment, I would advise all my readers 
to try. With a very little ingenuity, they will succeed 
much better than they would imagine. Should any 
make the attempt, and reduce to writing the result of 
the observations made, the report might be perhaps 
somewhat as follows : 



" From the yard of my father's house, I passed through 
a gate into the garden, intending to cross it and seek 
for my proofs of design, in the fields and wood beyond. 
As I passed along the walk, however, I observed several 
apples lying on the ground, under a tree. I took up 
one and found that it was ripe. I was thinking whether 
there was not design in the smooth tight skin by which 
the apple was covered, protecting it so fully from the 
rain, and thought that next spring, when the apples were 
about half formed, I would carefully pare one while it. 
was on the tree, and then leave it, to see what effect the 
loss of its skin would have on its future growth. 

" None but the ripe apples had fallen to the ground. 
It seems then that when the fruit has come to its maturi- 
ty, it is so contrived as to let go its hold, and fall. There 
appears to be no natural connexion between the maturity 
of the fruit and the weakness of the stem precisely at its 
junction with the tree, particularly as the rest of the stem 
continues strong and sound as before. 

"I mellowed one of the apples, as the boys term it, by 



28 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 1. 

Juices. Cells. The vine and its tendrils. Contraction. 

striking it rapidly against a smooth post, without how- 
ever breaking the skin. Before, though it was not very 
hard, it was firm to the touch, but now it was soft and 
yielding. What change had I made in its interior? A 
ball of wood could not be thus softened by blows. I 
cut it open. The juice flowed out profusely. If I had 
cut it open just as it came from the tree, not a drop 
would have fallen to the ground. I concluded that the 
sweet liquid had been carefully put up in little cells, 
which composed the substance of the fruit, and which 
had safely retained it until my blows had broken them 
all away, so as to mingle their contents into one mass. 
I thought how busily the power of God was employed, 
every summer's day, in ten thousand orchards, carrying 
these juices into every tree, apportioning its proper share 
to every apple, and conveying each particle to its own 
minute, invisible cell, 

" Just then I saw before me at a little distance, a 
cucumber vine, which had spread itself over the ground, 
and was clinging to every little sprig and pebble which 
came in its way. c How can its little tendrils find what 
they wish to clasp?' thought I, as I stooped down to 
look at them. I observed that the tendrils which did not 
come into contact with any thing, were nearly or quite 
straight, though some of them had grown out to a con- 
siderable length. Every one however which touched 
any object, had curled towards it, and some had wound 
themselves round so many times, that they would break 
rather than relax their hold. How delicate must be the 
mechanism of fibres, so contrived that by the mere invi- 
tation of a touch, they should curl and grasp the object 
which is presented. 

l( While looking at this, and observing that the origin 
of the tendril in the stem of the vine, was always at the 
exact place where a support would be most effectual, I 
noticed a small bright drop, which assumed, as I slightly 



Ch. LJ THE DEITY. 29 

The dew drop. Its supports. Highly finished work. 

changed my position, bright hues of orange, green, blue, 
and violet. It was a drop of dew, which lay in a little 
indentation of the leaf. I was admiring the admirable 
exactness of its form, and the brilliancy of its polished 
surface, and wondering at the laws of cohesion and of 
light which could thus retain every particle in its pre- 
cise position, and produce images so perfect, and yet so 
minute, as I saw reflected there, — when I accidentally 
touched the leaf, and the little world of wonders rolled 
away. The charm was broken at once; it vanished upon 
the wet ground as if it had not been. The spot upon 
the leaf, where it had been lying for hours was dry 
Thousands of downy fibres, which God had fashioned 
there, had held it up, and similar fibres in countless 
numbers clothed every leaf and every stem and every 
tendril of the whole. I looked over the garden and was 
lost in attempting to conceive of the immense number of 
these delicately fashioned fibres, which the all pervading 
Deity had been slowly constructing there, during the 
months that had just gone by. And when I reflected 
that not only that garden, but the gardens and fields all 
around me, — the verdure of the whole continent, — of the 
whole earth, — of unnumbered worlds besides, was all 
as exquisitely finished as this, the mind shrunk back 
from the vain effort to follow out the reflection. ,, 

But enough. Such a narrative might be continued in- 
definitely, and the young Christian who will actually go 
forth to study God's character in garden and forest and 
field, will find no end to his discoveries. And the very 
substances which are most common, and which he has 
been accustomed to look upon with the slightest interest, 
he will find teeming with the most abundant proofs of 
the Creator's benevolence and skill, and the boundless 
resources of his power. Take for instance, water, 
which, as it lies before us in a bowl, appears as simple, 

3* 



30 THE CORNER-STONE [Ch. 1 

Water. The fleecy cloud. Snow storms and snow flakes. 

and as little mechanical in its structure, as any thing can 
possibly be; and yet weeks would not be sufficient to 
describe its wonders. See it now gliding in a smooth 
gentle current to the ocean, over golden sands, enchain* 
ing us for hours upon its banks, to gaze upon its rippling 
surface,- and into its clear depths, — and now rolling in 
the billows of the ocean, which toss, with terrific power, 
the proudest structures that men can frame, as easily as 
they do the floating sea-weed. Again it assumes an 
invisible form, and the same particles, under a different 
law, float imperceptible in the atmosphere, or by their 
almost resistless repulsion, work the mightiest engines 
which man can construct. The Protean substance again 
appears to us in the form of a light fleecy cloud, sailing 
in the clear blue sky. And what is a cloud ? It presents 
only a surface of whiteness to the eye: but it is com- 
posed of countless drops, turned to their true spherical 
form with mathematical precision, and gently descen- 
ding through the air, as fast as their superior weight can 
find its way. Every fleecy cloud is in fact a shower, 
with drops smaller indeed than those of rain, and descen- 
ding more slowly, and consumed by the warm air below 
them, before they reach the earth. If we could see the 
gradual formation and dissipation of such a drop, as 
particle after particle comes to increase it, or flies away, 
we should see the operation of the Deity; and when we 
think how many clouds and storms sweep over the sky, 
every minute globule of which must be formed under the 
hand of God, we shall see how boundlessly multiplied 
are the operations of his hands. 

But the half is not yet told. Come out in the snow- 
storm, and after surveying the vast extent of country 
buried in its white wintry covering, look up into the sky, 
and estimate, if you can, the millions of descending flakes. 
Every one of these flakes, countless as they are, is 
formed and fashioned after its proper model. It is cry -5- 






Ch. l.j THE DEITY 31 

Perfect workmanship. The bubble. Its structure. 

talized in a precise form, every particle takes its precise 
place, every point of the beautiful star has its proper 
acuteness, and although in an hour a southern rain is 
to melt and destroy them all, still not one is neglected, 
not one is slighted, but every individual flake, of all the 
millions, is fashioned with as much exactness and care 
as if it was expressly intended for the examination of the 
chymist or philosopher. Now think of the vast fields 
of snow which whiten the arctic regions, — think of the 
eternal storms which sweep the polar skies, and which 
follow the retreating sun every season, far down towards 
his own peculiar climes, and conceive, if you can, the 
extent of the work, which the all pervading Deity has 
continually to do. 

There is then no end to the forms which this simple 
substance assumes, in the changes through which the 
Deity carries it. I will mention one more, because it 
illustrates peculiarly the idea that the most common 
objects are the most extraordinary, if we really look at 
them with an observing eye. It is the bubble; one of 
the most surprising things in nature, and yet one at which 
nobody ever thinks of being surprised. 

In order that we may examine it more conveniently, 
let us imagine it to be enlarged, for it is plain that its 
character does not depend at all upon its size. Imagine 
it then to be enlarged; suppose one, twenty feet in 
height, were to stand before you. What a magnificent 
dome! Pure, transparent, glistening in the sun, and 
irised by a thousand hues, which float and wave and 
spread in graceful and ceaseless motion on its surface f 
And yet this dome is built, by its architect, of what? Of 
marble blocks, fitted into one another with the care 
which man must exercise to construct his arch or dome ? 
Of iron bars to strengthen the sides and sustain the 
summit? No: but of fluid particles, which glide and 
swim among each other, as if thev had no connexion 



32 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 1 

Its wonderful mechanism. Intellectual and moral exhibitions 

whatever. They are bound together, firmly and exactly 
balanced, and yet with such admirable skill, that every x 
one is free to float and move where it will. The edifice 
is so strong, that if a heavy body falls upon it, it either 
glides down its side, or cleaves its summit; and the 
magic structure safely withstands the shock. It regains 
in an instant its form, as true, as symmetrical and as 
perfect as before; and yet, stable as it thus is, every 
stone in the edifice is in motion, and glides gracefully, 
and at perfect liberty, among the rest. It is indeed a 
wonder. The laws of reflection and cohesion and equi- 
librium, which every bubble brings into play, it would 
require a volume to elucidate, and yet the mighty ope- 
rator, seeming to find pleasure in endless occupation, 
dashes them out in the utmost perfection, under every 
waterfall; by means of them he surmounts every one of 
the countless waves of ocean with its snowy crest, and 
whitens a hundred thousand miles of sandy beach and 
rocky shore, with a perpetual fringe of foam. 

But after all, innumerable and wonderful as are these 
works of the Deity, these modes of acting out his attri- 
butes, there are far more interesting manifestations of 
bis character. For, exciting and animating as are such 
glimpses as these of the workings of the Almighty, it 
is only such attributes as skill, power, taste, invention, 
which are brought into view by them. They are most 
striking exhibitions it is true, but they are exhibitions 
of cold intellect only, after all. The splendor of the 
evening sky, the sublimity of a tempest, the exquisite 
delicacy of structure which we see in microscopic plants 
and animals, affect us strongly, but it is little more than 
a philosophical interest in a power and a skill, so infi- 
nitely varied in its designs, and so admirable in its ex- 
ecution. 

But you can go much farther than this, you can 
examine even in nature, the moral exhibitions of God's 



Ch. 1.] THE DEITY. 33 

An imaginary walk in June. God is love. 

character, and as we pass from these examples of mere 
mechanism, to those which exhibit to us the moral feel- 
ings of the being who performs these works, our hearts 
are touched. I will take, to illustrate this, one of the 
lowest examples of what I mean. 

It is June. We walk out in some retired and unin- 
habited region, in the midst of the forests, and find all 
nature thronged with active and happy life. Insects 
unnumbered sport in the sun, or skip upon the bright 
surface of the lake. Nimble aaimals chase one another 
upon the branches of the trees, or hide in hollow trunks, 
or gather nuts and fruits which fall around them, in in- 
exhaustible profusion. And what is all this for? Per- 
, haps for hundreds of miles around, there is not a human 
habitation; no human eye will witness this scene, and 
no human want will be supplied by any thing it produ- 
ces. What is it for? What motive induces these efforts? 
Why, it is because this mighty architect whose power is 
so great, and whose field is so boundless, loves to exer- 
cise that power in every corner of that wide spread field, 
for the purpose of producing enjoyment. No person can 
look on such a scene, with any thing like proper views 
of it, without feeling a glow of new interest and warmer 
attachment towards its mighty Author. The mere proofs 
of power and contrivance and skill, in the specimens of 
mechanism which have been noticed, awaken strong in- 
tellectual interest; — but it touches the heart, and awakens 
a deeper and warmer emotion there, when we see this 
architect, while actually carrying on the mighty mechan- 
ism of the heavens, still busily engaged in this seclud- 
ed valley, filling thousands and millions of his creatures 
with enjoyment, as if taking pleasure in witnessing the 
frolics of an insect; and drawing so copiously upon his 
stores of skill and power, to make a squirrel or a robin 
happy. 

The robin ; just look for a moment at his nest in the 



34 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 1. 

The robin and his nest. God's care of him. The pair. 

midst of this valley of peace. It is fixed securely in a 
cluster of branches, sheltered just enough by the foliage 
around, and in it are three or four tender, helpless, 
unfledged birds lying together. The open air and the 
broad sky is over their heads; nothing but the hanging 
leaf protects them from an enemy. They have no power 
to fly, no power to resist; hunger is coming on and they 
cannot provide food; but they lie alone and helpless and 
weak, the very picture of defencelessness and. exposure. 
But they are safe and happy. God makes them his 
care. They cannot bear cold; God has guarded them 
against it, by so poising the ponderous earth, and so 
carefully regulating its motions, that no nipping frost, and 
no storm of snow can possibly come to "desolate their little 
dwelling. They cannot defend themselves from violence 
or escape from it. True; and God has so regulated the 
instincts and propensities of the millions of living things 
around them, that they shall be exposed to none. They 
cannot provide themselves with food, and it will take but 
very few hours to bring them to excruciating suffering 
unless they are supplied. But they will be. supplied. 
God has sent out his messengers to provide for them. 
One flies from tree to tree in a distant part of the forest, 
and the other perhaps hops upon the shore of the brook or 
pond. The trees around them are filled with thousands 
of other birds, alluring them by their songs, and brighter 
vales and more shady trees invite them to stay. But no. 
God has bound them to one another; and to their help- 
less young, by a mechanism, as incomprehensible as it is 
beautiful in its results. It allows them to fly freely and 
unfettered as they choose, but it retains its indissoluble 
hold wherever they go. No song of a stranger will make 
them forget one another; no other nest will lead them to 
forget their own; no sunny bank or shady grove will 
have charms enough to detain them; but faithful to their 
trust they toil industriously through the day, and unless 



Ch 1.] THE DEITY 35 

The scene changed. January. Plans for protection. 

death or violence keep them away, they will be ready 
with their supply, when at night their helpless young 
open their mouths and cry for food. We cannot com- 
prehend the admirable mechanism by which these results 
are secured, but we love the character which our Father 
manifests in securing them. 

But let us change the scene. It is January, and we 
walk out into the same forest, and look upon the same 
stream which in summer was the scene of so much life 
and activity and happiness. How changed! Where are 
the insects now, which sported in the sunbeams, on the 
glassy surface of the water? That surface is still more 
glassy now, — solid and cold, — and over it scud the dry 
wreaths of snow before the bleak wind. Where are now 
the thousand forms of happy life, which enlivened every 
bank and fluttered from flower to flower? Alas! sunny 
bank and gay flower, and verdant turf are gone! The 
deep snow clothes the whole surface of the ground, cov- 
ering every smaller plant, and rising around the naked 
trunks of the tall trees, — hanging in wreaths over the 
banks, and fast accumulating, as the driving wintry 
storm brings on fresh supplies from God's inexhaustible 
treasuries. Where is that happy home among the branch- 
es of the tree? The leaves which sheltered it are gone, 
a mass of drifting snow marks the spot where the deso- 
late and forsaken habitation remains, and the cold dreary 
wind whistles through the naked branches around. 

We must remember too, that it is not in this one spot 
alone, that this change, and this apparent exhaustion of 
life has taken place. For thousands of miles, in almost 
every direction, in June, life and activity and enjoyment 
were as abundant as in this little dell, and now over all 
this wide extent winter has spread her reign of desolation 
and death. Has God left, is a very natural inquiry, has 
God left all these millions of his creatures to be over- 
whelmed with destruction ? 



36 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 1, 

The winter home. The Chrysalis. The ant. 

No; scarcely one. He has secured and protected 
them all. Never did the most cautious husbandman lay 
in his stores, and prepare his clothing, and secure the 
warmth and tightness of his buildings with half the effi- 
ciency of foresight and care which God exhibits every 
autumn, in shutting up, in places of safety and protection, 
all the varieties of animal and vegetable life. The storm 
and the wintry cold are not allowed to come till he has 
given maturity and strength to the helpless birds, and 
sent them away to warmer climes. Other animals have, 
in obedience to an impulse of which they could not know 
the nature and design, been industriously employed dur- 
ing the summer, in laying in their winter stores; and are 
now sheltered in holes, or hollow trunks, sleeping undis- 
turbed in the midst of a plenty which God has provided 
for them. Even the insect tribes, so delicate and frail, 
are all safe. By a most admirable arrangement, genera- 
tion succeeds generation in such a way, that the animal 
life of a whole species exists in such a form at the ap- 
proach of winter, that ice and cold and snow can produce 
neither injury nor pain. In these and in other ways, 
God has secured for all, protection, and exemption from 
suffering, and when the first wintry midnight storm roars 
through the forest, it finds every thing prepared for it. 
Every nest is empty, and its inmates are safe in another 
clime. All insect existence is protected, and the field 
mouse, and even the little ant, are carefully housed in 
their warm and sheltered and plentiful home. 

By such examinations as these, of God's works, we 
see that he is Love; that he is not merely a cold con- 
triver, exhibiting in his works mechanical skill and 
power alone, but that he has feelings of affection, that he 
is susceptible of strong personal interest and attachment 
It gives us great intellectual gratification to look at the 
exhibitions of his mere invention and power, but it touch- 
es our hearts, and awakens a <leep and warm feeling 






Ch. 1.] THE DEITY. 37 

God a father. A magistrate too. System. 

there, when we see this skill and power brought into 
requisition to secure the protection and happiness of 
even the lowest creatures he has formed. The inference 
is irresistible, that he who takes so much pains to bring 
to every unfledged robin or sparrow its daily supplies of 
food, cannot be indifferent to our protection and happi- 
ness. We must be of more value than many sparrows. 

In studying the character however of the great unseen 
Power which pervades the universe, you must not look 
exclusively at those kind and gentle aspects of it, which 
we have been exhibiting. God is a magistrate as well 
as a father. It is the part of a magistrate to act on 
system, and to be firm and decided in sustaining system 
and law. Plans must be formed with reference to the 
general good, and these plans must be steadily pursued, 
even at the occasional expense of great individual suf- 
fering. The wider the field, the more extensive the 
community, and more lasting and momentous the in- 
terests involved, the greater is the necessity of this de- 
termined firmness on the part of the magistrate upon 
whom the responsibility devolves. If now you wish to 
make out for yourself a Deity such as may suit your 
own weakness or timidity, you will pass over this part 
of God's character; but if you wish for truth, — if you 
really wish to understand^vhat sort of a Power it is that 
holds the reins of government over us all, you will not 
allow this aspect of his character to pass unexamined. 

Wherever we look then, whether to nature or revela- 
tion, or to that more distinct manifestation of his charac- 
ter which the invisible Supreme has made to us in the 
person of Jesus Christ, we shall find the most over- 
whelming, and sometimes appalling proofs, that God acts 
upon system; — that he has planned a system, both of 
physical and moral law, with reference to the greatest 
good of the greatest number, and that this system he 
will sustain, with the most determined and persevering 



38 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 1. 

Firmness and decision. The suffering child. Its mother. 

decision. I shrink from coming to this part of my sub- 
ject. Many of my readers, without doubt, who have fol- 
lowed me with all their hearts, in the pictures of God's 
character which have been exhibited so far, will hang 
back reluctant from what remains. But we must know 
the whole. We must endeavor to understand fully the 
character of the great Being with whom we have to do. 

If then we look at the manifestations of Jehovah's 
character which he has made, and is making, in nature 
all around us, you will find, as I said above, that he acts 
upon system, and that he will pursue the plan which 
public good requires, firmly and efficiently, even at the 
expense of great individual suffering. Let me first 
illustrate this, in regard to a mere physical law. 

You are studying God's character, I will suppose, in 
what you see of his works, and as you pass by some 
usually quiet and happy dwelling, your attention is at- 
tracted by piercing cries from within, apparently coming 
from a child and indicating acute suffering. You enter 
to ascertain the cause, and find that a little infant, just 
learning to delight its parents' hearts by its opening fac- 
ulties of speech and reason, has fallen into the fire, and is 
dreadfully burned. The poor child cries piteously, and 
extends its arms to its parents for relief. It has never 
before known a pain which they could not either relieve 
or mitigate, and its look of anguish seems to upbraid 
them for not rescuing it now. Its agonized parents, 
suffering even more than the child, look this way and 
that for help, but in vain. The injury is too deep to be 
repaired. Hour after hour, nay day after day, the in- 
tense suffering continues, until fever and delirium close 
the sad scene. 

Close it, did I say? No. The child sleeps, but 
memory does not sleep in the breast of its half-distracted 
mother. For weeks and months her eyes will fill with 
tears, and her heart will almost burst, as she looks upon 



Ch. 1.] THE DEITY 



Physical law sustained. God's determined decision. 

the deserted little cradle, or the now useless toy. Those 
heart rending cries and dying struggles are perpetuated 
in her mind by faculties which God has planted there; and 
the recollection will for months and years haunt her by 
day, and terrify her in her midnight dreams. 

All this follows from the accident of a moment, for 
which no one was to blame. There is but one Power in 
existence who could stop these consequences, after the 
recurrence of the cause. And will he do it? Will he 
interpose and stop the torture, and heal the wound, and 
bring relief and happiness once more to the distracted 
family? Or will he remain calmly by, leaving the laws 
of matter and of mind to work out in such a case their 
awful consequences to the full? 

The question does not need an answer. He has es- 
tablished laws in regard to the nature and effects of fire 
upon the human frame, and the connexion of bodily in- 
jury with bodily suffering, and the principles which reg- 
ulate the movements of the human heart, which he sees 
are best on the whole. These laws he has established. 
He sees that it is best that they should be liable to no 
exceptions and no uncertainty in their course, and he 
accordingly will carry them through. Men sometimes 
exhibit firmness and decision in carrying out a plan, 
which is on the whole for the best; but if we will look 
around us at the works of Providence, which invite our 
examination on every side, we shall see that God does 
not hesitate to go, in the execution of his laws, where 
the firmest and most decided men would shrink from fol- 
lowing. 

Perhaps some persons may object to such a view of 
our Maker's character; but if they do, it seems impossi- 
ble to avoid the conclusion that it is the character itself 
that they object to, and not to any thing peculiar in this 
mode of exhibiting it. These are facts which I have 
been exhibiting, not theories They are common facts 



40 THE CORNER-STONE [Ch. 1. 

General laws. Moral law. The wretched dwelling. 

too, that is, the transaction I have described not unfre- 
quently occurs, exactly as I have described it, and it is 
moreover a fair specimen of thousands and tens of thou- 
sands of occurrences which are precisely analogous to it 
in their nature, and which are constantly taking place in 
the view of every observer, j^or can there be any doubt 
of the explanation I have given. That God has ordained 
these general laws no one can doubt or deny. That he 
might arrest or suspend their operation in individual cases 
if be was inclined to do so, is equally unquestionable; 
and his allowing them to work their wav through so much 
misery, is proof clear and undeniable as demonstration, 
that though he loves happiness and is planning continu- 
ally to secure it for millions and millions of his creatures, 
he can still firmly and steadily witness individual suffer- 
ing, when necessary, and that he will do it, rather than 
sacrifice the general good by violating law. 

You will see this still more clearly and its effects are 
still more terrible, in regard to the operations of moral 
law. I mean law relating to the moral conduct of men. 
If you really wish to know what God's actual character 
is, as he exhibits it in what he does, you will take special 
interest in observing what he does in cases of guilt. 

On the side of a bleak and barren hill half a mile from 
the village in which you reside, stands a miserable house, 
or rather hovel, which has often attracted your attention 
in your walks, by its ruinous and dilapidated condition, 
and the pale, sickly, wretched children which shiver at 
the door. Did you ever consider what sort of a scene 
its interior usually presents, at night? Come with me 
and see. 

The inner door hanging by a single hinge opens 
creakingly, and the cold, empty, miserable apartment, 
presents to you an expression of wretchedness far more 
gloomy than even the exterior had led you to expect. 
The sickly, worn out wife and mother is trying in vain 



Ch. 1] THE DEITY. 41 

The interior. Misery. The father's return. 

to make out, from former remnants, some food for her- 
self and her half-starved children. They sit around 
the room, or hover over the embers, in a half stupor. 
They do not cry. The extreme of misery is silent, and 
these wretched ones are beyond tears. She is hurrying 
through her work to get them away from an approaching 
danger. What is that danger, which she does not dare 
that they should meet with her? Why their father is 
coming home. If it was the lightning, or a tornado, or 
a midnight assassin, she would gather her children around 
her, and they would feel safer and happier together. But 
their father is coming home, and the uncontrollable pas- 
sions of an insane husband and father, she chooses to 
bear alone. She sends her children away. She hides 
her babe in the most secret place she can find; — an ema- 
ciated, shivering boy spreads over him the thin covering 
which is all that is left, and draws himself up, as if he 
was trying to shrink away from cold; — and perhaps a 
girl, by a choice of miseries, has pleaded for permission 
to stay with her mother. 

All this is however the mere prelude, — the preparation, 
anticipating the scene of real misery which the return 
of the abandoned husband and father is to bring. But 
here I must stop; for if I were to describe the scene 
which ensues, just as it is actually exhibited in thous^ 
ands and ten thousands of families all over England and 
America, every night, my readers would lay down the 
book, sick at heart, at the contemplation of the guilt and 
miseries of man. 

But the point I am wishing to bring to your view in all 
this case, is this. How firmly and steadily will Jehovah 
go on, night after night, for months and years, and allow 
the wretched sinner in this case to drink all the bitter 
dregs of the cup he chooses, and to bring down its dread- 
fill effects upon his helpless wife and children. IVay we 

4* 



42 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ctl. 1 

Unpunished guilt, and suffering innocence. Penalties. 

may go further back. For all this misery is primarily 
caused by a poison which another man supplies; he deals 
it out a daily potion of death, and while his own head is 
sheltered, and his own fireside safe from its effects, he 
is permitted by Providence to go on for years, sending 
these streams of misery into many families all around 
him. Why does not God interpose to stop this vice 
and suffering? Why does he not shelter this wretched 
wife, and warm and feed these perishing but innocent 
children? — innocent at least, of the causes of their mis- 
ery. Why does he not by a change in the constitution 
of nature destroy the possiblity of making a poison so 
excruciating in its effects? There can^be but one an- 
swer. He sees that it is on the whole for the best, that 
man should be left free to sin if he will, and that the 
nature of sin should be shown by allowing it to work out 
undisturbed its own awful results to all connected with 
the sinner. These plans of his government he has the 
firmness to carry out, — though every year they cut down 
thousands of wretched wives and starved children. The 
man who chooses to send firebrands, arrows and death 
around him, has under the government of God an oppor- 
tunity to do so. The door is wide open. And the help- 
less and innocent wife and children must take the con- 
sequences. But oh, thou forlorn and broken-hearted 
mother, be of good courage. Thou art not forgotten, 
though fixed laws must take their course. Thou shalt 
have a hearing in due time. 

Such cases as the above, are rather cases of moral 
arrangements carried out firmly to their end, than exam- 
ples of the execution of the penalties of a moral law. 
I do not bring forward cases of the latter kind, because 
they are familiar to every one, and most certainly if 
God does not shrink from individual suffering, when it is 



Ch. 1.] THE DEITY. 43 

Language of the Bible. Leading traits of the Divine character. 

necessary to sustain the uniformity of material processes, 
or to carry out the moral operations of his general sys- 
tem, who can imagine that he will fail in the energy of 
his government in regard to the consequences of personal 
guilt. The Bible speaks on this subject in language so 
terrible that men shrink from repeating it; but nature 
speaks all around us more emphatically and more terribly 
still.* 

As I have already remarked, it would not be surpris- 
ing if some of my readers were to shrink back from 
these views of the determined decision which God man- 
ifests in carrying out to the end, all these arrangements 
which he has once deliberately adopted for the ultimate 
good of all. We cannot deny, however, that the history 
of God's dealings with men is full of such examples as 
we have presented, and that if we really and honestly 
wish to know what is his character and what principles 
do really govern his conduct, such cases deserve a most 
attentive consideration. He who wishes to frame for 
himself an imaginary Deity, suited to his own limited 
views and narrow conceptions, will probably shut his 
eyes against them. We however wish to know the truth, 
whatever it may be, and if we attempt to study God's 
character as it is exhibited in those manifestations of 
himself which he makes in his daily providence, we 
shall find everywhere inscribed in blazing characters, 
Unbounded power and skill; Universal and inex- 
tinguishable love; and Inflexible firmness in the 
execution of law. 

* We must not suppose from these facts, that the Deity is guided, 
in the government of the world, by general laws, which, though on 
the whole useful and salutary, are, in individual cases, mischievous 
and only to be tolerated because they effect, on the whole, more good 
than evil. These laws of nature, even in those cases where, to the 
eye of man, they produce nothing but evil, are in reality as truly 
intended and calculated to produce good, as in the other cases where 
the good is manifest and direct. 



44 THE CORNER-STONE. [Gh. 1 

Second manifestation. The Holy Spirit. Contrasts of character. 

We have thus far exhibited the mode by which you 
are to study the. character of our great Magistrate and 
Father, by his acts; and tnis mode of study, you will 
observe, is essentially the same, whether you read the 
record of his acts contained in the Bible, or observe 
them in the histories of nations and individuals, or in 
the occurrences of common life. All these however 
constitute but one mode by which the Deity manifests 
himself to men. There are two others which I must 
briefly allude to here, though they will be more fully 
brought to view in the future chapters of this work. 

The second great manifestation of the Deity which is 
made to us, is in "the exertion of a direct power upon the 
human heart. In all ages of the world, there have been 
remarkable exceptions to the prevailing selfishness and 
sin which generally reign among mankind. These ex- 
ceptions occur in the earliest history contained in the 
Bible; and were it not for the light which Christianity 
throws upon the subject, they would be almost unac- 
countable. Cain and Abel, for example, took entirely 
different courses in reference to their duties towards 
God. Love, gratitude, and reverence seem to have 
reigned in the heart of one, while a cold, heartless, and 
selfish worship was all that the other rendered. Here 
is an extraordinary difference among beings of the same 
species, possessing the same native powers and propensi- 
ties, and placed in substantially the same circumstances. 

Noah listened to the warning voice of God, while all 
the rest of the world gave themselves up to sin. Why 
should this be so? Worldly pleasure, we might have 
supposed, would have been as alluring to him as to 
others, and the disposition to obey and fear their Maker 
as strong in others as in him. But it was not so. He 
stood alone ; and how shall the moral phenomenon of his 
soJitary virtue amidst universal degeneracy and vice, be 
explained ? 



Ch. 1.] THE DEITY. 45 

Influences of the Spirit. Testimony of the Bible; of witnesses. 

So in a multitude of other cases. The narratives with 
which the Old Testament is filled seem designed to ex- 
hibit to us contrasts. A few individuals, with hearts 
filled with filial affection towards God, form the bright 
parts of the picture, and the natural character of selfish- 
ness and sin, acting in different circumstances, but in all, 
working out the same bitter fruits, exhibit abundantly 
the darker shades. Why should this be so? Why 
should Abraham find in himself a willingness to obey 
God, and to deal kindly and justly with man, while un- 
godliness, injustice and cruelty reigned almost all around 
him. Why was Joseph pure and spotless, — conscientious, 
just and forgiving ? His brothers were men of violence 
and blood. Why, in such a family should there be such 
an exception? 

Similar examples have been always occurring and the 
Bible exhibits them as the effects of a peculiar operation 
of the Holy Spirit, as it is termed, upon the human heart* 
A mysterious operation, powerful in its results, but in- 
comprehensible in its nature. This you will observe is 
a manifestation of the Divinity entirely different from 
those to which we have already alluded. In the works 
of creation and Providence, Jehovah himself acts, and 
from the nature of his actions we learn his character. 
In his direct power over moral agents, he mysteriously 
mingles his influences with their moral powers, so as to 
lead them to act, and by the character of the results, we 
likewise in this case learn his character. They are 
however two modes of manifesting the powers and char- 
acter of the Deity, which are very dissimilar. 

This class of moral effects are not only in the Bible 
ascribed to an influence from above, but they have 
always been so attributed by the individuals themselves. 
Good men, in all ages, have always understood, and have 
been eager to acknowledge their, dependence upon a 
higher power, for all that is good in their hearts They 



46 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. U 

United testimony. The Son. Seeing face to face. 

have differed exceedingly in their modes of expressing 
it, but they have agreed substantially as to the fact. It 
has always been easy for an antagonist to run them into 
difficulty and perplexity in defending the opinion; still 
they have clung unceasingly to it; or returned to it again 
and again when torn away; and go where you will, 
among mankind, wherever you find holiness of heart, 
and real moral virtue, you will find their possessor as- 
cribing them to a mysterious but all powerful influence 
from above. It is so with the refined and cultivated in- 
tellect in the most elevated christian community, and it 
is so with the humblest, lowest savage that ever bowed 
before his Maker to confess and to abandon his sins. It 
was so in former times with David and with Paul, and it 
is so now with every lonely widow, who, in God finds 
consolation and even happiness in the midst of her 
tears; and with every sick child, who, renewed by the 
Holy Spirit, finds such peace with God that he can 
smile at death, and welcome the grave. 

A more full consideration of this subject we must 
reserve: we only allude to it here, in order to bring 
distinctly forward in its place, the fact that there is this, 
among the other modes, by which the great unseen 
power manifests himself to men. 

There is one other; which we have already alluded 
to, — that more direct and personal exhibition of himself 
which God has made in Jesus Christ his son. Here 
God, for the first time, shows himself to men, openly and 
without a veil. Here we see the moral attributes of 
divinity in living and acting reality. In those other 
manifestations of himself which he has made, " we see 
through a glass darkly, but here face to face." When 
he acts in his providence, or in the mysterious and secret 
agency of his Spirit in human hearts, we must pause and 
reflect, in order to come to conclusions; we must trace 
back causes to effects, and infer the principles which 



Ch. 1.] THE DEITY. 47 

Studying God's character. True mode. Approaching the Deity. 

must have guided them. But when the great unseen 
assumes our own human nature, when he becomes, flesh, 
and dwells among us, his attributes and perfections come 
out into open day. 

Such are the three great manifestations of himself to 
men, which the one Unseen all-pervading essence has 
made, as exhibited to us in the Bible, and in our own 
experience and observation. Though there have been 
interminable disputes in the Christian church about the 
language which has been employed to describe these 
facts, there has been comparatively little dispute among 
even nominal Christians about the facts themselves. I 
have endeavored in describing them to go just as far as 
the Bible goes, ancLno farther, and to use as nearly as 
possible the expressions which are furnished us in that 
sacred volume. 

These views, my readers will perceive, open a very 
wide field to be explored in studying the character of 
God. Many young persons, when they hear of this 
study, form no idea oi any thing more than committing 
to memory a few passages of scripture, or learning by 
rote the summary views of some theological writer. But 
you see that all nature and all revelation, the whole fieid 
of observation, and of experience, and all the records 
of history are full of materials. Go then, and take no 
man's opinions upon trust, but study the character of 
God for yourselves by seeing what he does. 

There is one thing more to be said, before I close this 
chapter. Many persons feel a difficulty in determining 
how to approach the Deity in prayer. " What concep- 
tion," you ask, " shall we form, of the Being whom we 
address? " 

The unseen Divinity itself, in its purely spiritual form, 
we cannot conceive of; they who attempt to do it will 
find on a careful analysis of the mental operation, that if 



48 THE CORNER-STONE [Cll. 1 

Access by Jesus Christ. Conclusion. 

is the visible universe itself, that they picture to their 
minds, when in prayer they endeavor to form an abstract 
conception of the Deity which pervades it. Others in 
imagination look upward, and form a confused and an 
absurd idea of a monarch on a throne of marble and gold, 
with crown and sceptre, and sitting in a fancied region 
which they call heaven. This is a delusion which we 
have already endeavored to dispel. Driven from this 
imagination, the soul roams throughout the universe 
among suns and stars, or over the busy surface of the 
earth, seeking in vain for some conceivable image of the 
Deity, some form on which the thoughts can rest, and 
towards which the feelings can concentrate. It looks 
however in vain. God manifests himself indeed in the 
blazing sun, the fiery comet, — and in the verdure and 
bloom of the boundless regions of the earth; but these 
are not the avenues through which a soul burdened with 
its sins, would desire to approach its Maker. The gos- 
pel solves the difficulty. "It is by Jesus Christ that we 
have access to the Father." This vivid exhibition of 
his character, this personification of his moral attributes 
opens to us the way. Here we see a manifestation of 
divinity, an image of the invisible God which comes 
as it were down to us ; it meets our feeble faculties with 
a personification exactly adapted to their wants, so that 
the soul when pressed by the trials and difficulties of 
its condition, when overwhelmed with sorrow, or bowed 
down by remorse, or earnestly longing for holiness, will 
pass by all the other outward exhibitions of the Deity, 
and approach the invisible supreme, through that mani- 
festation of himself which he has made in the person of 
Jesus Christ, his son, our Saviour 



Ch. 2.] THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 


49 


The Savior's first words. His last words. 


Perfection. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 
" Leaving us an example that ye should walk in his steps." 

The very first words of our Savior, which have been 
preserved for us, contain an-expression of the great lead- 
ing principle, which regulated his whole life. " I must 
be about my Father's business.'" His last words, too, 
show, that thirty years of fatigue, and danger, and suffer- 
ing, did not extinguish his zeal in this his work. "Go ye 
into all the icorld and preach the gospel to every creature." 
He came into the world to do something, not for himself, 
but for his Father, and he devoted himself to it entirely. 
He was continually engaged in it himself, while he re- 
mained here, going from place to place, encountering 
hardship and danger and suffering, and all without any 
reference to his own selfish interests, but regarding sole- 
ly the work he had to do for the salvation of men. And 
at last, when he left the world, his final charge to his 
disciples was, that they should be faithful and persever- 
ing in carrying forward this work. 

In fact he was so entirely devoted to his Father's busi- 
ness, that half the readers of his life do not imagine, that 
he had any of his own. But we must not forget, that he 
was a man, with all the feelings, and exposed to all the 
temptations of men. He might have formed the scheme 
of being a Napoleon, if he had chosen. The world was 
before him. He had the opportunity, and so far as we 
can understand the mysterious description of his tempta- 
tion, he was urged to make the attempt. 

It is surprising how much the example of Christ loses 
its power over us, simply on account of the absolute 
perfection of it. If he had been partly a lover of pleas- 
jre, if he had for instance built himself a splendid man- 

5 



50 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 2, 

Common illusion. Real claims of Christianity. Mahometanism. 

sion, and ornamented his grounds, and devoted some 
portion of his time to selfish enjoyment there; or if he 
had entered into political life, and devoted a share of his 
attention to promoting his own honor, and yet if he had 
torn himself away from these temptations, so as finally to 
have devoted his chief time and attention to the glory of 
God and the good of men, than we should have felt, that 
the example was within our reach. The selfish and 
worldly spirit, which he would have exhibited, would, 
as it were, have made his case come home to us, and 
whatever fidelity and zeal he might have shown in his 
work, would have allured us to an imitation of it. But 
as it is, since he gave himself up wholly to his duty, since 
he relinquished the world altogether, Christians seem to 
think, that his bright example is only, to a very limited 
extent, an example for them. But we must remember, 
as I said above, that Jesus Christ was a man. His 
powers were human powers. His feelings were human 
feelings, and his example is strictly and exactly an 
example for all the world. Still nobody considers him 
a fair example ; at least very few do. Most Christians 
think, that the general principles, which regulate his 
conduct, ought to regulate theirs, but then the most they 
think of doing is to follow in his steps slowly and hesi- 
tatingly, and at a great distance behind. 

And there is nothing in which the example of Christ 
takes less hold of men, than in this leading principle of 
his conduct, — ■ devotedness to his Father's business. 
How perfectly evident it is, that a very large proportion 
of professing Christians are doing their own business in 
this world, and not their Father's. In fact so universal 
is this sin, that there are great numbers of nominal 
Christians, who have no idea, no conception whatever, 
of the ground which Christianity takes in regard to a 
man's duty. It stands strikingly distinct from every 
other religion Mahometanism leaves men to pursue 



Ch. 2.] THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 51 

Paganism. The worldly man. His character and habits. 

their own objects, — to live for themselves, — only it pre- 
scribes some rules regulating the modes, by which these 
aims shall be pursued. So does paganism, — so did an- 
cient philosophy, — so does modern infidelity. Whatever 
moral rules all these prescribe, are rules to regulate pur- 
suits, whose nature and objects remain unchanged. But 
Christianity does no such thing. It comes with far high- 
er claims, — it is no mere regulator of the machinery of 
human life. It comes to change the plan and object of 
that machinery altogether. 

Look at the history of a man engrossed in the world. 
He saw when he was young, that wealth gave considera- 
tion and influence to its possessor, and he felt a feverish 
sort of pleasure, when he received the first hundred dol- 
lars which he earned. He resolved to become rich, and 
in his eagerness to go on, he gradually became less and 
less scrupulous about the means of advancing. He vio- 
lated no laws; he exposed himself to no public disgrace, 
but he resorted to those means so well known to men of 
the world, by which he could increase his own stores at 
the expense of the rights or the happiness of others; and 
by these means he has at length acquired a fortune. He 
usually attends public worship on the Sabbath. It would 
be disreputable not to do so. But in the morning and 
evening, at his own private apartment, he will post his 
books, or look over his accounts, or plan his voyages. 
There is nothing disreputable in this. 

He is not a profane man; — not at all, in his own opin- 
ion. It is true, that sometimes, when excited, he will 
make use of what he acknowledges to be an improper 
expression, but men will make allowances for this. He 
does not do it to such an extent as to injure his char- 
acter. 

He does not worship God in his family. He has no 
particular objection to religion, but he has no taste for it; 
and then, besides, he has not time. In order to carry on 



52 


THE CORNER-STONE. 


[Ch. 2 


Seriousness. 


He is changed. 


One kind of religion- 



his plans, it is necessary for him to go early to his count- 
ing room, and at night he is fatigued and exhausted, and 
wishes to rest. As to the answer he shall make, when, 
at last, God shall summon him to account for the immor- 
tal soul intrusted to him, he never thinks of it. Still he 
is not entirely devoid of all sense of accountability. He 
would not for the world have a note fall due, without 
looking forward to the time, and being prepared for it. 
In fact, he plans very wisely. His object is to make a 
fortune, and he is taking a most judicious and successful 
course. It is no part of his design to please God, or to 
do good to man; — to save his own soul, or to prepare 
for a happy meeting with his children in heaven. This 
is not his business, and of course he does not attend to it. 
As, however, he advances in life, he begins to think 
sometimes more seriously. His minister brings to his 
view an approaching judgment, and explains the strict 
ness of God's law, so that his conscience begins to 
trouble him. He perceives that though his mode of life 
has been perfectly reputable among men, still it must 
be considered somewhat irregular when compared with 
God's law. His children begin to be ungovernable and 
dissipated as they grow up, and one of them comes, 
under very melancholy circumstances, to an untimely 
end. He is troubled. In short he resolves to reform. 
He banishes all business from the Sabbath except, that 
when the sermon does not particularly interest him, he 
cannot help sometimes thinking a little of his voyages or 
his sales. He becomes more scrupulous about infring- 
ing upon his neighbor's rights, or taking an unfair ad- 
vantage of their necessities. He establishes morning 
and evening prayers in his family, and though he does 
not always think of the Being he is addressing, he 
always regularly addresses him, in words, and there is 
generally a feeling of reverence and awe, and a sort of 
vague impression on his mind, that he is really speaking 



Ch. 2.] THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 53 

His great business. His final account. Consequences. 

to the Supreme. He becomes a benevolent man too. 
That is, when an application is made for charity, he 
gives as much as he thinks will be expected of him. 

In a word, there is a great change in his character. 
'Tis true he is still pursuing the same great objects, but 
then Christianity has come in to regulate the mode of 
his pursuing them. And he goes on for the rest of his 
days, making his fortune on much better principles, and 
in much better ways, than in the early part of his life. 
Still, making his fortune is his business. The ultimate 
object for which he lives and acts is to get money into 
his possession. Every thousand dollars he obtains, he 
invests in the most safe and profitable mode he can com- 
mand, and looks upon it as so much done, — accomplished. 
And when at last he comes to die, and on his death-bed 
looks over his past life, all the satisfaction he can have 
will be, in reflecting, that though making his fortune 
has been the object of his life, he has nevertheless made 
the last half of it, in the most unexceptionable manner. 

Now is such a man a follower of Jesus Christ? Is 
making a fortune for himself his Father's business? 
No; when he appears before God in judgment, he must 
expect to be addressed thus, "Did you not know, that 
you were stationed on earth to do good; to turn men to 
God, to set an example of devoted attachment to his 
cause; to relieve suffering and promote human happi- 
ness, as the great objects of your life? All this was 
distinctly explained to you, and that you might perfectly 
understand it, you had the example of Jesus Christ, your 
Savior, who spent a life on earth in the most trying cir- 
cumstances, for the very purpose of showing how much 
is meant by the command, that men should serve God 
while they live, and not themselves. You were distinctly 
and emphatically told, that you were not your own, that 
you had been bought with a price, and were bound to 
live and act as a steward, an agent, a servant. But 
5* 



54 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 2. 

Samuel's business. How a child may imitate the Savior. 

you have not done so. Instead of it, you have taken 
possession, in your own name, of the means of influence, 
and. of usefulness, which were put into your hands to 
be used for God. You have had your trial, and it has 
resulted in your deliberate and final choice to act for 
yourself, and not for your Maker. 

Let us look at another case. Samuel is a little boy, 
eight years old. He has really become a Christian, and 
wishes to do his duty, and his whole duty. Do you 
wish to know, Samuel, what it is ? If you look into the 
Bible, to your Savior, for an example, you will see, that 
the first principle of action which he announced was, 
that he was doing his Father's business. But you 
remember, that he was sent from heaven to do a great 
work here, which you cannot do. "I cannot go," you 
say, " from place to place, preaching the gospel and 
working miracles, and giving sight to the blind, and heal- 
ing the sick. I would if I could." 

It is true you cannot do that. That is, you cannot do 
your Father's business in the same way precisely, that 
Christ did. Or, to explain it more fully, God has a 
great deal of business to be done in this world, and it 
is of various kinds, and the particular portion allotted to 
each person, depends upon the circumstances in which 
each one is placed. You cannot do exactly what Christ 
did while he was here, but you can do what he would 
have done had he been in your place. You cannot 
make a blind man happy, by restoring his sight, but you 
can make your little sister happy, by helping her up 
kindly when she has fallen down; and that last is your 
Father's business, as much as the other. His business 
here is to make every one happy, and to relieve every 
one's suffering. You cannot persuade great multitudes 
of men to love and obey God, as Christ endeavored to, 
but you may lead your brothers and sisters to do it, by 
your silent influence and happy example So you can 



Ch. 2.] THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 55 

The glory of God. Acting as a steward. Worldliness. 

bear sufferings patiently, and take injuries meekly, and 
thus exhibit the character which God wishes to have 
prevail here. The light you thus let shine may be a 
feeble light, and it may illuminate only a narrow circle 
around you; but if it is the light of genuine piety, it will 
be in fact, the glory of God; and if it is your great 
object to let this light shine, you are about your Father's 
business, as truly as Jesus was, when he preached to the 
thronging multitude, or brought Lazarus from the tomb. 
Yes; if a little child is making it his great aim to do 
good, by making his parents, his brothers and sisters, and 
his playmates happy, for the sake of co-operating with 
God, he is following the example of Christ. 

It is very difficult for an observer to tell whether an 
individual is acting for God or for himself. A Christian 
merchant, for instance, who feels, that he holds a stew- 
ardship, will be as industrious, as enterprising and as 
persevering in his plans as any other merchant. Only 
he acts as agent, while the other acts as principal. So 
a boy may be amiable and gentle and kind without any 
regard to God, or any desire to carry on his plans. But 
God sees very clearly, who is working for him, and who 
is not; and there is not one, and there never has been 
one, in any age, who, if he had been inclined to enter 
God's service, would not have found enough to do for 
him, had he been disposed to do it. The example of 
Jesus Christ in this respect is an example for all mankind. 
It is intended for universal imitation, and they who pass 
through life without imitating it, must find themselves 
condemned when they come to their account. 

And how strange it is, that God should find so very 
few willing to do his business in this world. Even of 
those few, most, instead of entering into it, heart and soul, 
do just enough to satisfy what they suppose to be the 
expectations of their Christian brethren. A lady will 
spend her life, engrossed with such objects of interest as 



06 THE CORNER-STONE. L Ch. 1. 

Love of furniture. Dress. The work of God. 

new furniture, and fashionable dress, and the means 
of securing the admiration of others, for herself or her 
children. She thinks, for days and weeks, of procuring 
some new article of furniture, not for comfort or conve- 
nience, but for show, and when it comes she is pleas- 
ed and delighted, as if one of the great objects of her 
existence had been accomplished. She spends hours up- 
on the color or texture of a ribbon, which as soon as 
it is chosen, will begin to fade, and will soon fall into 
contempt and be rejected; or she pursues, month after 
month, and year after year, what she calls the pleasures 
of society, which pleasures are often a compound of 
pride, vanity, envy, jealousy and ill-will. Her husband 
all the time devotes himself to pursuits equally unworthy 
an immortal mind. They do some good accidentally, 
and call themselves Christians, but they seem to have 
no idea, that God has any work for them to do. 

Has he work for them to do ? Yes ; there is a 
world to be restored to holiness and happiness, and he 
asks their help in doing it. He has put their children 
almost completely in their power, so that their eternal 
happiness might be almost certainly secured, and has 
given them connexions with society, of which they might 
avail themselves in working most efficiently for him. If 
they would take hold of this enterprise, they would have 
some elevated and ennobling object before them. They 
would see, one after another, those connected with them, 
returning to God. They would see their children grow- 
ing up in piety. Every night, they would feel that they 
had been living for God, and whatever might be their 
difficulties, they would be relieved from all sense of re- 
sponsibility and care. Instead of feeling gloomy and 
sad, as their children scattered from them, or were 
one by one removed by death, and as they themselves 
were gradually drawing towards the close of life, they 
would find their interest in their great business growing 



Ch. 2.] 


THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 57 


Low pursuits. 


The arts and lefinements of life. 



stronger and stronger, as they approached the great 
change, which would bring them more directly into con- 
nexion with their Father. The offer, on the part of our 
Maker, to take us into his service, in this world, is the 
only plan, which can give human life any real dignity, 
or substantial value. Without it all human employments 
are insignificant, all pleasure is insipid, and life is a ster- 
ile waste, void of verdure or bloom. Without this, there 
is an entire disproportion between the lofty powers and 
capacities of human nature, and the low pursuits and 
worthless objects, which are before it in its present 
home. ' An immortal spirit, capable of thoughts, which 
explore the universe, and of feelings and desires reach- 
ing forward to eternity, spending life in seeing how many 
pieces of stamped metal it can get together! a mind 
made in the image of God, and destined to live as long 
as he, buried for years in thoughts about the size and 
beauty of a dwelling, which is all the time going to 
decay, or about the color and fashion of dress, or the 
hues and carvings of rose-wood or mahogany! 

But let no one understand me to condemn the enjoy- 
ments which come to us through the arts and refinements 
of life. It is making these things the great object of 
existence, — it is the eager pursuit of them, as the chief 
business of life, which the example of our Savior and 
the principles of the gospel condemn. These arts and 
refinements are intended to add to human happiness. 
They will make the most rapid progress in those coun- 
tries where Christianity most perfectly prevails. Jesus 
Christ had a taste for beauty, both of nature and art; he 
admired the magnificent architecture of the Temple, and 
deeply lamented the necessity of its overthrow, and his 
dress was at least of such a character, that the disposal 
of it was a subject of importance to the well-paid sol- 
diers, who crucified him. Yes, the universal reign of 
Christianity will be the reign of taste and refinement and 



58 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 2 

The enjoyments of life. The Savior's character. Energy. 

the arts; but while the enjoyments of men will be in- 
creased in a tenfold degree from these and other sources, 
their hearts will be set far less on them, than they are 
now. They will be recreations by the way, to cheer and 
refresh those whose hearts are mainly bent on accom- 
plishing the objects of their Father in Heaven. 

I have dwelt longer, perhaps, on this subject than I 
ought to have done. This book, though its subject is 
Christian truth, is intended to throw as strong a light as 
possible on Christian duty, and in considering this the 
first great trait of our Savior's character which presents 
itself to view, I could not avoid asking my reader to 
pause a moment to consider what he himself is really 
living for. 

But let us return to the example of our Savior. 

Jesus Christ was in some respects the most bold, ener- 
getic, decided and courageous man that ever lived; but in 
others he was the most flexible, submissive and yielding; 
and in the conceptions which many persons form of his 
character, there is a degree of indistinctness and con- 
fusion, from want of clear ideas of the mode in which 
these seemingly opposite qualities come together. The 
explanation is this. The question, which of these two 
classes of qualities he would exhibit, depended entirely 
upon the question, whether it was his own personal wel- 
fare or his Father's business, which was at stake. If it 
was the latter, he feared no danger, he shrunk from no 
opposition, and no obstacle or difficulty would turn him 
from his course. If it was the former, his own personal 
welfare, he^ was exactly the reverse, — mild, gentle, 
yielding, to such a degree, that, at first view, it would 
seem impossible, that it could be the same man. There 
never was a mission or an enterprise of any kind, con- 
ducted with a more bold, energetic, fearless spirit, than 
the Savior's mission* and on the other hand, there never 



Ch. 2.j THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 59 

Mildness and forbearance. His story of the Samaritan. 

was a case where personal sacrifices and injuries were 
borne with so much indifference and unconcern. Ob- 
serve how he reproved the insincere and dishonest pre- 
tenders to religion, which filled Judea in those days. 
He followed them into crowds, he met thern face to 
face, and in the most direct and personal manner, spread 
out their insincerity and hypocrisy before them. Yes, 
in the midst of Jerusalem, the very heart and centre 
of their influence, he brought forward his accusations 
against them, with a power and severity which human 
eloquence has very seldom equalled. This was in the 
cause of his Father. But when it came to his own, how 
changed. Peter's most unmanly and ungrateful denial, 
was reproved by a look! And Judas, coming at midnight 
with armed men, to seize him by the basest treachery, 
was called to a sense of his guilt, by the mildest, the 
very gentlest reproof which language could frame. So 
when the profanation of his Father's temple was to be 
stopped, he could use a scourge, and effect a forcible 
ejectment with almost military authority, and yet when, 
as was shown afterwards in the judgment hall, there 
was nothing to excite him but his own personal injuries, 
he was meek and gentle as a lamb. He was equally 
ready to use the scourge, in the cause of God, and to 
submit to it in his own. 

And this principle is the key to his whole conduct. 
Many anecdotes might be given to illustrate it. One 
day, for example, when speaking in the midst of Priests 
and Levites, in the very seat of their power, he told the 
story of the good Samaritan. Nothing could be more 
keenly cutting or more bold than this. They hated the 
Samaritans, because they would not come to Jerusalem 
to worship, and were proud of their own piety, because 
their worship was offered in the right place! Jesus did 
not enter into any labored argument with them, to show 
that piety was a business of the heart, and not of geo- 



60 




THE 


C0RXER- 


■STONE. 




[Oh. 


~. 


His 


rejection ?A 


Samaria. 


Flans. 


Bold 


and 


systematic action-. 



graphical location ; he simply told them the story, — cutting 
as it did, exactly across their bitterest prejudices; they 
would not even have any dealings with the Samaritans. 

Some time afterwards, he came in contact with the 
same feeling again, though in a different way. He was 
travelling with his disciples, and on arriving at Samaria, 
they would not receive him, because he ivas going to 
Jerusalem. Here the prejudice between the rival sects 
nly injured him, personally. And he thought and cared 
nothing about it. His disciples were angry, but he 
quieted them at once, and went on. Thus it was always 
with him. Yielding, submissive, patient in regard to his 
own personal injuries and sufferings, but firm, inflex 
ible and courageous in the extreme, in resisting every 
injury to the cause committed to his care. 

There is something very bold and energetic in the 
measures he adopted in accomplishing his work. The 
great business which it was necessary for him to effect 
before his crucifixion, was, to publish effectually through 
out Judea, his coming, and the principles of his gospel, 
— and to exhibit, as publicly as possible, the miraculous 
evidences of his mission. He did it in the most effectual 
manner, in about three years. In fact, there perhaps 
never was so great a moral effect produced in three years, 
on any so extensive a community, if we consider at all 
the disadvantages incident to the customs of those days. 
There was no press, no modes of extensive written com- 
munication, no regularly organized channels of inter- 
course whatever, between the different portions of the 
community. He acted under every disadvantage and 
availed himself of no miraculous modes of disseminating 
his principles; but yet, so skilfully did he plan, and with 
such promptness and energy did he execute, that in a 
very short period the work was done. 

What were these plans? In the first place he went 
himself, directly and boldly, into every centre of influence 



Ch. 2.] THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 61 

His personal boldness. Nights of orayer. Style of speaking. 

and population he could find. When Jerusalem was 
crowded with the multitudes, which came together at 
the Passover, he was always there, in the most public 
and conspicuous places, exposing, in the most explicit 
and direct manner, the sins of the times, and exhibiting 
the principles of true religion, with a distinctness and 
vividness and beauty, which have never been equalled. 
At other times, he was travelling from place to place, 
through fertile and populous provinces, visiting the larger 
villages and towns, and gathering great multitudes around 
him in the open country. And yet though he was, in 
his business, thus bold and enterprising, he was in 
feeling, as we shall 'see more distinctly in the sequel, 
df a quiet and retiring spirit. He always withdrew at 
once from the crowd when his work was done. He 
sought solitude, he shrunk from observation; in fact al- 
most the only enjoyment which he seemed really to love, 
was his lonely ramble at midnight, for rest and prayer. 
He spent whole nights thus, we are told. And it is not 
surprising, that after the heated crowds and exhausting 
labors of the day, he should love to retire to silence and 
seclusion, to enjoy the cool and balmy air, the refreshing 
stillness, and all the beauties and glories of midnight, 
among the solitudes of the Gallilean hills; — to find 
there happy communion with his Father, and to gather 
fresh strength for the labors and trials, that yet re- 
mained. 

Another thing, which exhibits the boldness and enter- 
prise, that characterized his plans for making an im- 
pression on the community, was the peculiarly new and 
original style of public speaking he adopted. It was 
sententious, brief, antithetic. Every sentence was load- 
ed with meaning, and so concisely and energetically ex- 
pressed, that the sentiment could neither be misunder- 
stood nor forgotten. " If worldly pleasure allures you 
away from duty," a more timid and cautious speaker 

6 



62 


THE CORNER-STONE. 


[Ch. 2. 


Sermon on the Mount. 




The assembly. 



would have said, "you must relinquish it. Think how 
much more important your salvation is than any tempo- 
ral gratification/' If your right hand offend you, says 
Christ, cut it off. If your right eye offend you, pluck 
it out. You had better enter into life with one eye, 
than to be cast into hell-fire with two. 

The delivery of the sermon on the mount is, probably, 
the most striking example of moral courage, which the 
world has ever seen. There are two circumstances, 
which render the occasion on which it was delivered, 
extraordinary. First, it was a very public occasion. A 
vast multitude from almost every part of the country were 
assembled. Judea, the southern province, and Gallilee, 
the northern, were represented; so were the eastern and 
western shores of the river Jordan, and many distant 
cities and towns. From all this wide extent of country 
a vast multitude, attracted by the fame of the Savior's 
miracles, had assembled to hear what this professed 
messenger from heaven had to say. Again, it was prob- 
ably, though not certainly, a very early occasion. Per- 
haps the first on which the great principles of the gospel 
were to be announced to men. By this discourse, con- 
taining, as it does, so plain and specific an exposition of 
the false notions of religion then prevailing, the Savior 
must have known, that he was laying the foundation of 
that enmity, which was to result in his destruction. But 
did he shrink? Did he hold back? Did he conceal or 
cover over one single obnoxious feature of the truth? 
He knew that the report of that meeting must be spread 
to every part of the country. As he looked around upon 
his auditory, he must have seen, here, one from a Galli- 
lean village, there, another from beyond the Jordan, and 
again a third, who would carry his report to distant Je- 
rusalem; and yet thus completely exposed, instead of 
attempting to soften or conceal, he brought out all the 
distinctive features of prevailing error, and contrasted 



Ch. 2.] 


THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 63 


His missionaries. 


Results. Key to his character. 



them with the pure principles of his spiritual religion, 
with a plainness and a point, which was exactly calculat- 
ed to fix them in memory, and to circulate them most 
widely throughout the land. 

It was always so. The plainness, the point, the un- 
daunted boldness, with which he exposed hypocrisy and 
sin, and the clear simplicity with which he held up to 
view the principles of real piety, have no parallel. And 
yet he knew perfectly well, that in direct consequence 
of these things, a dark storm was gathering, which must 
burst in all its fury upon his unsheltered head. 

But the enterprising and determined spirit, with which 
Christ entered into his work, was not satisfied with his 
own personal exertions. He formed the extraordinary 
plan of sending out simultaneously, a number of his most 
cordial friends and followers, to assist in making the most 
extensive and powerful impression possible, upon the 
community. At first he sent twelve, then seventy, who 
went every where, presenting to men the simple duties of 
repentance for the past, and of pure and holy lives for 
the future. There could not have been measures more 
admirably adapted to accomplish the work he had to do. 
And they succeeded. In two or three years it was done. 
And every Christian, who has work to do for his Master 
here, should learn a lesson from the enterprise and sys- 
tem and energy, which Jesus Christ exhibited in doing 
his. 

This then is the key to the character of Jesus Christ 
in respect to spirit and decision. These qualities shine 
out with unequalled lustre, whenever there was any duty 
to be done; but the most mild and patient and humble 
submission take their place, when there is personal injury 
or suffering to be endured. In the streets of Jerusalem, 
and on a question, which concerns the character of God 
or the duty of man, we find him with all his faculties 
aroused, silencing every opponent by his unanswerable 



64 THE CORNER-STONE [Ql. 2. 

Courage. The night in the garden. Suffering 

arguments, or his appeals of irresistible eloquence and 
power. But when these subjects fail, all the energy of 
attack or defence on his part gives way with them, and 
before his personal enemies, planning personal injury to 
him, he stands silent, patient and submissive, leaving 
the whole torrent of injury to take its course, meeting it 
with no resistance and returning no reply. 

It seems to me, that the history of the world cannot 
exhibit an act of higher, nobler courage, than our Savior 
performed, in coming down to meet Judas and the armed 
band, the night before he was crucified. Just imagine 
the scene. On the eastern side of Jerusalem, without 
the walls, there is a sudden descent to a stream, which 
flows through the valley. Across this stream, on the 
rising ground beyond, was a quiet and solitary place, 
where Jesus very often went for retirement and prayer. 
He understood very well his approaching torture and 
crucifixion; he had taken, the evening before, his last sad 
farewell of his disciples, and with the day of agony and 
death before him on the morrow, he could not sleep. It 
was a cold night, but a sheltered dwelling in the city 
was no place for him. He asked his three dearest 
friends to go with him, that he might once more cross 
the valley, and for the last time, take his midnight walk 
upon the Mount of Olives. Oppressed with anxiety and 
sorrow, he fell down alone before God and prayed, that 
he might be spared what was to come. He had gone 
on firmly thus far, but now his heart almost failed him. 
Six long hours of indescribable agony seemed too much, 
for the frail human powers, which must necessarily bear 
the whole. He prayed God to spare him if it could be 
possible. 

But it could not. His strength failed under the. ex- 
haustion produced by his mental sufferings, and by the 
more than death-like perspiration, which the night air, so 
cold at this season that even the hardy soldiers needed 






Ch. 2.] THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 65 

Lights and weapons and armed men. Real courage. 

fire, could not chill. Mysterious help from heaven re- 
stored him a little, but though refreshed by heavenly 
sympathy, we must remember that it was human pow- 
ers, that had this trial to bear. 

At list there is heard through the trees, at a distance 
down the valley, the sound of approaching voices. Lights 
are seen too; — and now and then a glittering weapon. 
They are coming for him. Fly! innocent sufferer, fly! 
Turn to the dark solitudes behind you, and fly for your 
life! — No. The struggle is over. The Savior, collect- 
ed and composed, rises and walks on to meet the very 
swords and spears sent out against him! We must re- 
member, that there was nobody to encourage him, nobody 
to defend him, or to share his fate. It was in the darkness 
and stillness of night, the very hour of fear and dread; 
and the approach of those whose dim forms and suppress- 
ed voices arrested his attention, was the signal not of 
danger, but of death, — nor of death merely, but of pro- 
tracted and unutterable torture. Still he arose and went 
forth to meet them. " Whom seek ye?" said he, — c: I 
am he." We have read this story so often, that it has 
lost its impression upon us; but could we come to it 
afresh, and really appreciate the gloomy, dreadful cir- 
cumstances of the scene, we should feel, that the desert- 
ed Savior, in coming down under these circumstances, 
to meet the torches and the weapons, which were to light 
and guard him back to such enemies and to such a death, 
exhibits the loftiest example of fortitude, which the world 
has ever seen. There was less noise, less parade, less 
display than at Thermopylae or Trafalgar; but for the 
real sublimity of courage, the spectacle of this solitary 
and defenceless sufferer, coming at midnight to meet the 
betrayer and his band, beams with a moral splendor 
which never shone on earth before, and will probably 
never shine again. 

6* 



66 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 2 

Tliree great traits. Love of nature. Kirk White. 

We have thus far considered the great leading prin 
ciples of our Savior's public conduct. As we have pre- 
sented them they are three. 

1. Entire devotedness to his Father's work. 

2. Energy, system, and undaunted courage, in prose- 
cuting it. 

3. The mildest, most unresisting and forgiving spirit 
in regard to his own personal wrongs. 

We might close our view of his character with these 
leading principles of it, but there are some other traits 
of a more private nature, which it is pleasant to notice 
We shall mention them as they occur 

1. He evidently observed and enjoyed nature. There 
are many allusions to his solitary walks in the fields ana 
on the mountains, and by the sea-side; but the greatest 
evidence of his love for nature, is to be seen in the man- 
ner in which he speaks of its beauties. A man's meta- 
phors are drawn from the sources with which he is most 
familiar, or which interest him most; so that we can 
judge very correctly what the habitual thoughts and feel- 
ings of a writer are, by observing what images arise to 
his mind, when he is interested in writing or conversa- 
tion. We take down a volume of poetry, for an illustra- 
tion of this remark, and open, almost at random, to the 
following lines by Henry Kirk White. 

" God keep thee, Traveller, on thy journey far; 

The wind is bitter keen — the snow o'erlays 
The hidden pits and dangerous hollow ways, 
And darkness will involve tnee. No kind star 
To-night will guide thee, Traveller, — and the war 

Of winds and elements on thy head will break, 

And in thy agonizing ear, the shriek 
Of spirits on their stormy car, 
Will often ring appalling — I portend 

A dismal night, — and on my wakeful bed, 

Thoughts, Traveller, of thee, will fill my head, 
And him, who rides where winds and waves contend 
And strives, rude cradled on the seas, to guide 
His lonely bark on the tempestuous tide 



Ch, 2.] THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 67 

The Savior's metaphors. The lily. Insensibility of men. 

Now such a passage as this admits us very far into 
the author's habits of thought and feeling. No man 
could have written it unless he had often felt the sublimi- 
ty of the midnight storm, and sympathised strongly with 
ihe anxieties and dangers of the lonely traveller. He 
must have been out in such a scene and realized the 
emotions it excites, or he could not have painted them 
so vividly. 

We learn in the same manner how distinct were the 
impressions of beauty or sublimity, which the works of 
nature made upon the Savior, by the manner in which he 
alluded to them. Take for instance, the case where he 
speaks of the decoration of the lilies. What a concep- 
!ion! We are so familiar with it, that it loses its impres- 
sion upon us, but if we could approach it anew we should 
be astonished at its boldness and beauty. He is endeav- 
oring to persuade his disciples not to be anxious about 
their food or clothing, for if they will do God's will, he 
will take care of them. il Look at the lilies of tie field," 
says he, "they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I 
say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory, was not 
arrayed like one of these." A cold, heartless man, with- 
out taste or sensibility, would not have said such a thing 
as that. He could not; and we may be as sure, that Je- 
sus Christ had stopped to examine and admire the grace 
and beauty of the plant, and the exquisitely penciled tints 
of its petal, as if we had actually seen him bending over 
it, or pointing it out to the attention of his disciples. 

The mass of mankind never notice the beauties and 
wonders, that are always around them. Among hundreds 
walking in a garden, it is only a very few, who would 
perceive the objects of astonishment and delight which 
abound there. Here are several shrubs side by side. 
They grow from the same earth, are warmed by the 
same sun, and refreshed by the same showers; and yet 
the very same juices coming up one stem, arrange them- 



68 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 2 

The garden. Its wonders. The Savior's taste and sensibility. 

selves into a currant at the top, — coming up another they 
form themselves into a pear, and in the third case, into a 
rose. The real lover of nature pauses to reflect, as he 
sees these various fruits and flowers, how strange it is, 
that a mechanism so exquisite can be arranged in those 
stems, so as to bring such astonishing and such different 
results from one common store-house of materials. The 
multitude do not think of it at all. They consider it as 
a matter of course, that figs should grow upon the fig- 
tree, and grapes upon the vine, and that is all they think 
about it. 

Here is a little seed too. It seems to the eye, lifeless 
and inorganic; indistinguishable from a useless grain of 
sand. But what a complicated system is safely packed 
away in its little covering. Put it into the ground, and 
in a few months return to the spot, and you find a little 
tree, covered with leaves and flowers, and giving to many 
birds and insects a shelter and a home. 

Now Jesus Christ noticed these things. He perceiv- 
ed their beauty and enjoyed it. His heart was full of 
images, which such observations must have furnished. 
He could not otherwise have so beautifully compared the 
progress of his kingdom to the growth of such a tree. He 
could not have related the parable of the sower, if he had 
not noticed with interest the minutest circumstances con- 
nected with the culture of the ground. His beautiful 
allusions to the vine and to the fig-tree, the wheat and 
the tares, the birds of the air, and the flocks of the field, 
all prove the same thing. It is not merely that he spoke 
of those things, but that he alluded to them in a way so 
beautiful, and touching, and original, as to prove, that he 
had an observing eye and a warm heart for the beauties 
and glories of creation. 

2. There is the same kind of evidence that he noticed, 
with the same observing eye and intelligent interest, the 
principles and characteristics of human nature. Take 



Ch. 2.] THE MAN CHRIST JESUS. 69 

His mode of addressing men. Moral sympathy. Reasoning. 

for example, his story of the father's welcoming his re- 
turning prodigal, — the woman seeking the lost money, — 
the steward making friends with his master's debtors, 
and the pardoned sinner loving much because much had 
been forgiven. He observed every thing ; and his im- 
agination was stored with an inexhaustible supply of 
images, drawn from every source, and with these he 
illustrated and enforced his principles in a manner alto- 
gether unparalleled by any writings sacred or profane. 

3. In exerting an influence over man, he endeavored 
to avjaken the moral sympathies, rather than produce cold 
conviction through the intellect. In regard to almost all 
important moral and religious truth, there is a witness 
within every man's heart, and it was the aim of our 
Savior to awaken this witness and to encourage him to 
speak. Other men attempt to do every thing by reason- 
ing, — cold, naked reasoning; which, after all, it may 
oe almost said, is the most absolutely inefficient means 
which can be applied, for the production of any moral 
effects upon men. 

Christ very seldom attempted to prove what he said. 
He expressed and illustrated truth, and then left it to 
work its own way. Sometimes he argued, but then it 
was almost always in self-defence. When at liberty to 
choose his own mode, as for example in the sermon on 
the mount, he said such things as commended them- 
selves to every man's conscience, and their power con- 
sisted in the clearness and emphasis with which he said 
them. If he reasoned at all, the distance was very short 
between his premises and his conclusion, and his steps 
very simple and few. 

4. Jesus loved his friends. The duty of universal 
benevolence, which he so strongly enforced, he never 
meant should supersede the claims of private, personal 
friendship, or interfere with its enjoyments. He himself, 
while he was ready to die for thousands, preferred tc 



70 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ctl. % 

He loved his friends. He loved his mother Proof 

take his walks, and share his griefs, with Peter, James 
and John. There is nothing more touching, in regard 
to this subject, than his private intimation at the last sup- 
per, to his dearest personal friend, of the fact, that it 
was Judas, who was to betray him. He understood and 
felt the happiness of communion and confidence between 
kindred spirits, and, by his example, has authorized us to 
link ourselves to one another, by the ties of friendship 
and affection, as strongly as we please. Christianity, in 
expanding the affections of the individual, till they reach 
every brother and sister on the globe, does not weaken 
or endanger a single private or domestic tie. While it 
draws the whole human family together, it links, by a 
still closer union than before, the husband with the wife, 
and the parent with the child, — sister to sister, and 
friend to friend. It is indeed " the bond of perfectness," 
or as we should, at this day, express it, a perfect bond. 
5. The last thing I have to say about the character 
of Jesus Christ is, he loved his mother. Perhaps I have 
some young readers, who can remember that at some 
recent period, when they have been sick or suffering 
from any cause, they have, by their fretfulness or discon- 
tent, brought trouble and care to their parents, and have 
considered themselves excused for it, by the circum- 
stances in which they have been placed. To them I 
have one thing to say. Your Savior was nailed to the 
cross. The whole weight of his body was suspended 
from his lacerated limbs, and here he had to hang hour 
after hour, till life actually sunk under the power of 
suffering. But even here he did not forget his mother. 
He gave, in the most touching manner possible, his dear- 
est friend a charge to be kind to her, to protect her, to 
take care of her as long as she should 1 live. He did this, 
however, almost by a word, for under such circumstan- 
ces it was torture to speak. "Behold thy mother." 
That was all; but it was enough. Now let me ask 



Ch. 3.] 


HUMAN DUTY 71 


Filial affection. 


A difference between the gospels and the epistles. 



each one of my readers, whether old or young, who has 
a mother still in life, as you shut this book at the close 
of this chapter, to go and devise some act of kindness 
and affection for her, in imitation of the dying example 
which the Savior set us. Do something to cheer and 
comfort her; even if it is no very substantial act of kind- 
ness, it will bring gladness to her heart, as a memorial 
of your remembrance and affection. Mary must have 
felt this proof of love most deeply. They told the 
Savior, long before, that his mother was to be envied. 
She must have endured a great deal of solicitude and a 
great deal of suffering, during her life; but it must have 
gone far towards counterbalancing it all, to be remem- 
bered thus, under such circumstances, and by such a son. 



CHAPTER III. 

HUMAN DUTY, 
OR THE SAVIOR'S MESSAGE TO MANKIND. 

" And they went out and preached that men should repent." 

It is a remarkable fact, and one which has often sur- 
prised careful readers of the Bible, that scarcely any 
thing is said by our Savior himself, in regard to his own 
sufferings, as the ground of human salvation, while the 
writings and addresses , of the apostles are full of this 
theme. There is a most extraordinary contrast, in this 
respect, between the gospels and the epistles. In the 
former, Christ's sufferings and death are scarcely ever 
spoken of, in the latter, nothing is spoken of so much. 
This state of the case has, on the one hand, led many 
persons to underrate the influence and importance of 
our Savior's sufferings and death, and they defend their 
views by referring to the nature of our Savior's instruc- 



72 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 3- 

Wrong way to read the Bible. Right way. 

tions. Others err on the other side, by taking the 
epistles as their only model, — not sufficiently consid- 
ering the character of Christ's instructions. Others 
are embarrassed when they think on this subject; they 
do not know how to reconcile the seeming inconsistency, 
though they endeavor to diminish it, as far as possible, 
by exaggerating and emphasizing the little which Jesus 
Christ did say, in regard to his sufferings and death. 
We ought always to suspect ourselves when we are 
attempting to get out of scriptural difficulties in this 
way; — by loading passages of scripture with more mean- 
ing than they will naturally bear; a process very com- 
mon among theological writers. The best way is to let 
the Bible speak for itself. We must not try to improve 
it, but just let it tell its own story, in its own way. The 
man who, when he reads some of the strong, decided 
passages in the Epistles, ascribing all hope of human 
salvation to the atoning sacrifice of the Son of God 
finds himself holding back from the writer's view, endeav- 
oring to qualify the language or to explain it away, is 
not studying the Bible in the right spirit. On the other 
hand, he who cannot take the directions which Christ or 
John gave, for beginning a life of piety by simple repent- 
ance for the past, without adding something from his own 
theological stores, or forcing the language to express 
what never could have been understood by those who 
originally heard it, — he cannot be studying this book 
with the right spirit. We must take the Bible as it is; 
and there certainly is a very striking and extraordinary 
difference, between the public instructions of our Savior 
himself, and those of his apostles, in respect to the 
prominence given to the efficacy of his sufferings in 
preparing the way for the salvation of men. Let us look 
into this. 

Whenever, under any government, a wrong is done, 
there is, as any one will see, a broad distinction between 



Oh. 3.] HUMAN DUTY 7S 

The school house. A stormy night. Trouble 

the measures, which the government must adopt, in 
order to render it safe to pardon, and the conditions with 
which the guilty individual is required to comply, in 
order to avail himself of the offer. To make this plain, 
even to my younger readers, I will describe a case. It 
illustrates the principle, I admit, on a very small scale. 

In a remote and newly settled town in New England, 
on the shore of a beautiful pond, and under a hill covered 
and surrounded with forests, was a small school house, 
to which, during the leisure months of the winter, thirty 
or forty boys and girls gathered, day after day, from 
the small farm-houses, which were scattered over the 
valleys around. One evening a sort of exhibition was 
held there. Before the time had arrived, there had be^n 
indications of an approaching snow storm. These in- 
creased during the evening; and when, at the close of 
it, the assembly began to disperse, they found that the 
storm had fairly set in. 

The master was sitting at his desk, putting away his 
papers, and preparing to go home. The snow was 
beating against the windows, and the aspect of the cold 
and stormy weather without, made many of the scholars 
reluctant to leave the warm and bright fire, which was 
still burning on the spacious hearth. For many of them, 
sleighs were to be sent by their friends, others were 
waiting for company, and every minute or two the door 
would open and admit a boy shivering with cold, and 
white with snow. 

Presently the master heard some voices at the door, 
in which he could distinguish tones of complaint and 
suffering. Several of the boys seemed to be talking 
together, apparently about some act of injustice which 
had occurred, and after waiting a few minutes, the master 
sent for all the boys who were standing at the door, to 
come to him. 

Half a dozen walked eagerly in, and behind them 
7 



74 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 3 

The lost cap. Conversation. The teacher's perplexity. 

followed one, more reluctantly; his head was bare, and 
he had evidently been in tears. As they entered the 
room, the conversation among the other children was 
hushed, all their preparations were suspended, and every 
face was turned with an expression of eager interest 
towards the master, as this group approached him. 

"William," said the master to one of the foremost, 
"there seems to have been some trouble, will you tell 
me what it is?" 

" Yes sir: Joe Symmes threw his cap," (pointing to 
the sorrowful looking boy in the rear,) " off upon the 
pond, and it has blown away and he cannot find it." 

" Joseph," said the master, " is it so'? " 

Joseph acknowledged the fact. It appeared, on more 
careful inquiry, that there had been some angry collision 
between the boys, in which Joseph had been almost 
entirely to blame ; it was a case of that kind of tyranny 
of the stronger, which is so common among school boys. 
In the end, he had seized his schoolmate's cap, and 
thrown it off upon the icy surface of the pond, over which 
it had glided away with the driving wind and snow, and 
was soon lost from view. Joseph said he knew it was 
wrong, and he was sorry. He said he ran after it, as 
soon as it was gone, but he lost sight of it, and that now 
he did not know what he could do to get it again. 

The master told the boys they might go to the fire, 
while he considered, for a few minutes, what he ought to 
do. 

When left ajone, the teacher reflected that there were 
two separate "stfbjects of consideration for him. First 
there was an individual who had been guilty of an act of 
injustice. Next there was a little community, who had 
been witnesses of that injustice, and were all in suspense, 
waiting to know what would follow. 

" I am sorry to punish Joseph," thought he, " for he 
seems to be sorry for what he has done, and I think it 



Ch. 3.] HUMAN DUTY. 75 

The plan formed. Penitence necessary before forgiveness. 

highly probable he will not repeat it; but if I let such a 
case pass with a mere reproof, I fear it will do injury 
to the school. The boys will have less abhorrence in 
future for acts of injustice and oppression by the strong- 
er, than they have had. Just in proportion as they see 
sin, without seeing sad results coming from it, they will 
lose their sensitiveness to its guilt. I must not let this 
case pass, without something to make a moral impres- 
sion. I wish I could do this without bringing suffering 
upon Joseph, but I do not see how I can." 

"Ah! I see what I can do;" thought he, "I will take 
the suffering myself. Yes; I will forgive Joseph at once, 
and then I will go out myself and find the cap, or help 
them find it, and when the scholars see, that the conse- 
quences of this offence come upon my head, bringing me 
inconvenience and even suffering, especially if they see 
me bear them with a kind and forgiving spirit, perhaps 
it will do as much good as punishing Joseph would do. 
Yes; I know that all my pupils, and Joseph among the 
rest, are strongly attached to me, and I am sure that when 
they see me going out into the cold storm, over the ice, 
and through the snow, to repair the injury which he has 
done, it will make a strong impression. In fact it will, I 
am sure, touch them more effectually, and produce a 
much stronger dislike to such a spirit, than four times as 
much inconvenience and suffering inflicted as a punish- 
ment upon Joseph himself." 

It is evident now that such a plan would be safe and 
proper only on supposition that Joseph is really sorry 
for what he has done. The course proposed would be 
altogether inadmissable, if the offender, instead of being 
humble and penitent, should appear angry and stubborn. 

On the other hand, if the master's plan was a wise 
one, although real penitence on the part of Joseph would 
be absolutely necessary, nothing else would be neces- 
sary He need not know any thing about the plan on 



76 THE CORNER-STONE [Ch. 3. 

Distinction illustrated. A dialogue. Forgiveness of Joseph. 

which the master relies, for producing the right moral 
impression on the little community. 

Now the whole object of this illustration, is to bring 
clearly forward the distinction, between what is neces- 
sary as a measure of government, — in order to prepare 
the way to offer pardon, and what is necessary as an act 
of the criminal, in order to enable him to receive it. 

It is very evident, in this case, that these two things 
are entirely distinct and disconnected, and that it is not 
at all necessary that Joseph should know the ground on 
which the Teacher concluded it safe for him to be for- 
given. The master's suffering the inconvenience and 
trouble is an essential thing to be done, in order to render 
it safe to forgive; but it is not an essential thing to be 
known, at the time forgiveness is declared. In fact, the 
most delicate and the most successful mode of managing 
the affair, would be for him to say nothing about it, but 
simply to do the thing, and let it produce its effects. 

Accordingly the master, in-this case, after a few min- 
utes of reflection, called the boys to him again. 

"Joseph," said he, "you have done wrong, in op- 
pressing one younger and weaker than yourself, and I 
might justly punish you. I have concluded however to 
forgive you; — that is if you are sorry. Are you sorry?" 

" Yes sir, I am," replied the boy distinctly. 

" And are you willing to make proper reparation, if I 
will tell you what to do?" 

"Yes sir." 

" James," continued the master, '• are you willing he 
should be forgiven?" 

" Yes sir, I am willing he should be forgiven, but how 
shall I get my cap?" 

" I will talk with you aoout that, presently. You see 
that is another part of the subject; the question now is, 
what is to be done with Joseph? He has done wrong, 
and might justly be punished, but he is sorry for it, and 
in this case, I conclude not to punish him." 



Gh. 3-] HUMAN DUTY. 77 

The teacher's walk. Effect on the boys. Joseph. 

If the whole subject were to be left here, the reader 
will perceive how incomplete and unfinished the trans- 
action would be considered, in respect to its effects on 
those who witnessed it. It would, if left here, bring 
down the standard of justice and kindness among the 
boys. And if the pupils had been accustomed to an 
efficient government, they would be surprised at such a 
result. 

. But still, though the teacher had something in reserve 
to prevent such an injury, it was not, as I have said 
before, at all necessary, nay it was not expedient, that 
he should say any thing about it, thus far. Joseph's 
penitence was essential to render his pardon proper. 
This it was indeed necessary for him to understand. 
The measure to be adopted, was essential to render that 
pardon safe. This it was essential for no one but the 
master to understand. It was necessary that the moral 
effect should be produced on all, but the measure which 
the master had in view for producing it, might safely 
remain unexplained, till the time came for putting it into 
execution. 

After all was thus settled with the boys, the master 
took down his cloak, and said he would go out and see 
if he could find the cap. Joseph wanted to go with him, 
but his teacher replied, that it would do no good for him 
to go out in the cold too; — it might be necessary to 
go quite across the pond. He however asked Joseph 
to show him exactly where he had thrown the cap, and 
then, noticing the direction of the wind, the master walk- 
ed on in pursuit. 

A cluster of boys stood at the door, and the girls 
crowded at the windows to see their teacher work his 
way over the slippery surface, stopping to examine every 
dark object, and exploring with his feet every little drift 
of snow. They said nothing about the philosophy of the 
transaction; in fact they did not understand it. The 
7* 



78 THE CGRNER-STOffE [Ch. 3. 

The teacher's return. Moral effect of Christ's sufferings. 

theory of moral government was a science unknown to 
them ; but every heart was warm with gratitude to their 
teacher, and alive to a vivid sense of the criminality of 
such conduct as had resulted thus. And when, after a 
time, they saw him returning with the cap in his hand, 
which he had found half buried in the snow, under a 
bank on the opposite shore, there was not one whose 
heart was not full of affection and gratitude towards the 
teacher, and of displeasure at the sin. And the teacher 
himself, though he said not a word in explanation, felt 
that by that occurrence, a more effectual blow had been 
struck at every thing like unkindness and ill-will among 
his pupils, than would have been secured by any reproofs 
he could have administered, or by any plan of punish- 
ment, however just and severe. 

Such a case is analogous, in many respects, to the 
measures God has adopted to make the forgiveness of 
human guilt safe. It is only one point, however, of the 
analogy, which I wish the reader to observe here, viz. 
that though the measure in question was a thing essen- 
tial for the master to do, it was not essential for the crim- 
inal to understand, at the time he was forgiven. 

So in regard to the moral effect in God's government, 
produced by the sufferings of Jesus Christ, in preparing 
the way for the forgiveness of sin. The measure was 
necessary to render free forgiveness safe, but a clear 
understanding of its nature and of its moral effect, is 
not always necessary to enable the individual sinner to 
avail himself of it. 

In the early ages of the world, it was obscurely inti- 
mated to men, that, through some future descendant of 
Abraham, measures were to be adopted, which should 
open the way for the expiation of human guilt. What 
these measures were, few, if any, understood; they were 
in many cases, anxiously waiting for a developement of 
them, but, in the meantime* it was universally under- 



Ch. 3.] HUMAN DUTY. 79 

Essentials. The penitent child. The shipwrecked minister. 

stood, that if any man would forsake his sins and serve 
Jehovah, he should be forgiven. The simple proclam- 
ation, "Repent and be forgiven," went everywhere. 
The ground, on which such a proclamation could be safe 
and wise, it was for God alone to consider, and to reveal 
to men, just as soon, and just as extensively, as he might 
see fit. 

Let it be understood, that I am speaking of what is 
essential, not what is desirable. The knowledge of our 
Savior's sufferings and death, and clear ideas of the 
grounds of them, have been in every age, the most pow- 
erful of all possible means of impressing the heart, and 
leading men to God. Still they are not the only means. 
Man could not have been forgiven if Christ had not died, 
but he may be forgiven, and yet not know that Christ 
died, till he actually meets him in heaven. 

The moment a little child, for instance, is capable of 
knowing that it has a Maker, and of discerning between 
right and wrong,' it is capable of loving God, and feeling 
penitence for sin; and the mysterious influences of the 
Spirit may as easily awaken these feelings at this age, as 
at any other. It can be forgiven, however, only through 
the sufferings of its Savior, and yet months must elapse, 
before it can know any thing about these sufferings; and 
years, before it can look into the principles of govern- 
ment enough, to see why they were necessary, or to 
appreciate at all the moral impression they produce. 

Suppose a christian minister is thrown by shipwreck 
upon a savage island, and in a state of sickness and 
exhaustion so great, that he feels that he must sink in a 
few days to the grave. He knows nothing of the lan- 
guage, but he soon succeeds, by careful attention, in 
obtaining phrases enough to preach repentance. 

' There is a God," he says to those around him in 
his dying hour. " He will punish the bad. — Become 
good and you will please him." 



80 THE CORNER-STONE [Ch. 3. 

The savages. Conscience, the universal monitor. 

"Ah!" reply the savages, "we have all been bad 
already, — very bad." 

" Think not about the past," he replies. " It will be 
forgiven: — there is away: — I cannot explain it. Leave 
your wickedness and do right, and God will save you." 

As he utters these words, his strength fails, and his 
audience can hear no more. But they have heard 
enough. I do not say enough to induce them to forsake 
their sins and return to God, but to show them how to 
do it. And if men, after hearing only such a sermon as 
that, were to continue their lives of wickedness, and die 
unchanged, it would still be true, that the opportunity of 
mercy had been fully before them. 

"We did not know," they might say, when called to 
account, "that a Savior had died for us, and conse 
quently could not know how we could be forgiven." 

" You are without excuse;" the judge might reply 
" It was for you to abandon your sins; — It was for me 
to consider how you could be forgiven." 

Now every savage that ever lived has had just such 
a sermon as this preached to him. Not by a christian 
minister, indeed, wrecked on the reefs of his island, but 
by a far more faithful and intelligible preacher than any 
such would be. Conscience, the universal ambassador 
from heaven, has been unceasingly faithful, in every 
age, and in every clime, preaching repentance, and open- 
ing the door of salvation to every human soul. That 
our fellowmen do almost invariably, if left to this warn- 
ing voice alone, disregard it and persist in sin, is indeed 
true; but at the day of judgment it will appear that, of 
all the countless millions of the human family, though 
but a very small portion ever heard of a Savior, there 
never was one, who might not have been saved through 
his death, if he had done what God, during all hrs life, 
was continually calling him to do. 

Though this preaching, that is the simple call to re- 



Ch. 3.J 


HUMAN DUTY 


81 


Duty plain. 


John the Baptist. Jonah. 


Voice of conscience. 



pentance, is generally powerless, it is not always so. 
In the Jewish nation there were undoubtedly a great 
many penitent and pardoned men, though they knew lit- 
tle or nothing of their future Savior. John the Baptist 
undoubtedly made many true converts; even Jonah's 
preaching was successful; and a hundred and twenty, at 
least, were found to have received aright the instructions 
of our Savior, though even his apostles did not know 
that he was to be crucified for them. It is so too in our 
times. True piety, unquestionably, often exists where 
there is a very imperfect understanding, or a very limited 
appreciation of the nature of the great sacrifice for sim 
This fact is very evident to all, though it often very 
much embarrasses those who do not properly distinguish 
between what it is necessary for man to do, in order to 
be saved, and what it is necessary for God to do, in order 
to render it safe to save him. On this latter point, the 
human soul may be kept in the dark by a thousand cir- 
cumstances, for which it is not responsible; but in 
regard to the former, it cannot be kept in ignorance or 
led into mistake. Conscience may indeed be perverted; 
Dut still, it will sometimes speak, — more or less distinctly 
it is true, — but it will speak: and not a human being can 
get through his time of trial here, without hearing its 
warning. God has given it a message to every one, 
which, if heeded, will secure salvation; and that message 
it will in every case, most assuredly deliver. 

It seems, then, that Jesus Christ very clearly recog- 
nised the distinction between the provision which God 
must make, in order to open the way for human salva- 
tion, and the part which man must perform, to avail 
himself of it, and it is the last, very evidently, which it 
is of direct and immediate importance for man to know. 
It was the last, which he accordingly devoted his chief 
time and attention in urging on man,- 1 - viz. his own 



82 THE CORNER- STONE. [Ch. 3. 

Personal duty plain, though universally neglected. 

personal, immediate duty. They who heard him were 
indeed inexcusable before, but the clearness, the distinct- 
ness and the emphasis, with which he brought forward 
the claims of God over human hearts, rendered them 
more inexcusable still. 

And here I must remark, that this mode of attempting 
to turn men to God, met with only very partial success. 
Jesus Christ succeeded in persuading very few. It was 
not till afterwards, when the love of Christ in dying for 
men, was loudly and universally proclaimed, that hearts 
were touched, and penitence awakened. But still this 
preaching of the sufferings of Christ afterwards, was not 
throwing additional light upon duty, — it was only a new 
inducement to do it. The great duty, repentance, was 
the same afterwards as before. The only difference was, 
that men were more easily led to repent, after they had 
learned the greatness of the sacrifice by which alone pen- 
itence could be available. They ought, however, to have 
repented before; if they had done so, God would have 
forgiven them, though they could not have understood 
how such forgiveness could safely be bestowed. And so 
it is now. By the sacrifice of the Son of God, the door 
of salvation on repentance, is opened to every human 
being on the globe.* 

But to return. The great subject of Christ's instruc- 
tions seems to have been simply, human duty. It was his 

* It has often been made a question among religious writers, wheth- 
er, in point of fact, repentance and salvation ever come to the inhab- 
itants of those benighted countries, where the Savior has never been 
known. Into this question we do not now enter; i. e. it is not our 
design here to inquire whether they ever do repent and forsake their 
sins, but only to exhibit the sentiment held up by the apostle, in the 
first chapter to the Romans, that God has not left himself without 
witness to any son or daughter of Adam. It is certain that if they 
would listen to this voice, and repent of sin, they would be forgiven. 
Whether they will or not, is a question which we consider more 
fully in the following chapter. 



Ch. 3.] HUMAN DUTY. 8S 

God's deeign in the creation. The ten commandments. 

object to explain, not the great arrangements and meas- 
ures of God's government, but the duties which each 
individual sinner had personally to perform. 

In order to exhibit clearly the ground he took, we 
must consider a moment, the plan which God had in view 
in creating men. It was his design to form one great, 
united and happy family, with himself at the head of it. 
He meant to devote himself to the happiness of his crea- 
tures, and he wished them to be interested in each other, 
and joined to him. It is exactly the plan which every 
wise parent adopts in his family. Many a father does 
all he can to promote this mutual good-will among his 
children, and this feeling of dependence and attachment 
towards him as their head, while he, nevertheless, stead- 
ily refuses to come under the same system in his relation 
to God, who is the great head of the family to which 
he himself belongs. His children, one would suppose, 
might often see the contrast between the filial and frater- 
nal duty, which he is willing to perform himself, and what 
he expects of them. 

Taking this view of the design of God, in regard to the 
family of man, we shall be surprised to see how admira- 
bly adapted to secure it, that code of laws is, which he 
originally gave to men. We have read the ten com- 
mandments so many times, nay they have been so long, 
and so indelibly impressed on the memory, that it is diffi- 
cult for us to approach them in such a way, as to get a 
fresh and vivid conception of their character. To obvi- 
ate in some degree, this difficulty, I give the substance 
of them in other language, so that the reader may see 
more clearly, by looking at them, as it were, in a new 
light, with what admirable skill they are adapted to the 
object. The wisest assembly o«f statesmen or legislators 
which ever convened, if called together to form a code 
for the world, — to apply to every nation, and to operate 
through all time, could not have made a better selection 



84 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 3. 

Analysis of the moral law. 

of points to be brought forward, or arranged them with 
more scientific and logical precision, or expressed them 
in clearer terms. And yet the infidel affects to believe, 
that they were the production of the half civilized leader 
of a wandering horde, — contrived just to assist their 
author in maintaining an influence over his semibarba- 
rous followers! But let us look at this code. 

THE MORAL LAW. 

I. DUTY TO GOD. 

1. Your Maker must be the highest object of your in- 
terest and affection. Allow nothing to come before him; 
but make it your first and great desire to please him and 
to obey his commands. 

2. You shall never speak of him lightly or with irrev- 
erence, and you shall not regard any visible object as 
the representative of him. He is a spirit, invisible from 
his very nature, and you must worship him in spirit and 
in truth. 

3. Consecrate one day in seven to the worship of 
God, and to your own religious improvement. Entirely 
suspend, for this purpose, all worldly employments, and 
sacredly devote the day to God. 

II. DUTY TO PARENTS. 

1 . You are placed in this world under the care of 
parents, whom God makes his vicegerents, to provide for 
your early wants, and to afford you protection. Now you 
must obey and honor them. Do what they command 
you, and comply with their wishes, and always treat 
them with respect and affection. 

III. DUTY TO MANKIND. 

Keep constantly in view, in all your intercourse with 
men, their welfare and happiness, as well as your own. 
Conscientiously respect the rights of others, in regard, 

1. To the securitv of life. 



Ch. 3.] HUMAN DUTY, 



85 



Its character. Effects of obedience to it. 

2. To the peace and happiness of the family. 

3. To property. 

4. To reputation. 

II. keeping these commands too, you must regulate 
your heart as well as your conduct. God forbids the 
unho'y desire, as much as he does the unholy action. 

Such is God's moral law. And we may triumphantly 
ask, where is the statesman or philosopher, who can mend 
it. In giving it as above, I have done nothing but alter 
its language, so as to present it with freshness to the 
reader, — and number its sections, so as to bring to view 
its admirable arrangement. I have not omitted a provi- 
sion, or added one not originally there, nor altered the 
position of a single command. Look at it again; and 
imagine it perfectly obeyed in this world. What a world 
it would make of it ! This is that great law of God, whose 
perfection and purity are praised from one end of the 
Bible to the other; this is the law men have broken and 
will break; and in regard to this law it is, that the whole 
controversy is pending between God and man. Men 
pretend to find a great mystery about the nature of sin, 
and the nature of holiness, to excuse themselves for re- 
maining unchanged ; but the whole mystery is here. Here 
is a law which they will not keep. They never have 
kept it, and they will not begin. And yet disregarded, 
violated, trampled upon as it has been by common con- 
sent, throughout the whole human family, no man has 
ever dared to lift up his voice against its justice. No. 
From the day when it was first thundered forth on Sinai, 
it has been loudly proclaiming its commands, conscience, 
in every bosom, re-echoing its voice; and the boldest, 
the wildest, the most daring opposer of God, never had 
a word to say against the justice of its claims. 

Now the great design of our Savior's instructions, was 
to induce men to abandon their sins, and begin at once 
8 



86 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 3. 

Spiritual obedience to it. The Priest and the Levite. 

to keep this law. He explained its spirituality, and 
brought out to view the two great principles on which 
all its commands were based; supreme affection to God, 
and disinterested benevolence towards men. 

It is most interesting to observe, how directly and 
clearly Jesus Christ always insisted upon spiritual obe- 
dience to that law. I mean by this, obedience of the 
heart; — and how constantly he cut off, in the most de- 
cided manner, all those hollow acts of mere external 
conformity, which men were continually substituting in 
its place. And it is, if possible, still more interesting to 
observe, how liberal and expanded were his views in 
regard to the outward acts by which this heartfelt com- 
pliance might be indicated. On the one hand, no act 
whatever, and no course of life, however seemingly re- 
ligious, would satisfy him, if there was evidence that the 
secret feelings of the heart were wrong. On the other 
hand, no action was too trivial to be a mark of piety, if 
it only proceeded from the right spirit. For example, 
here are a priest and a Levite, devoting their lives to 
their Maker's service. Nobody doubts their eminent 
holiness. How does the Savior judge? Why, he leads 
them along a road where a man lies suffering. He 
watches to see what they will do. — They pass by on the 
other side. Ah, that reveals the secret! A man may 
devote his life to the external service of God, without 
really loving him at all; but he cannot really love him, 
and yet pass by, and neglect a distressed and suffering 
brother. And so in a thousand other cases. The beauty, 
the clearness, the delicacy, and yet the searching, scru- 
tinizing power of the tests he applied to the religious 
professions of those days, are unparalleled. They would 
make sad work- with some of the bold, self-sufficient, 
hollow-hearted zeal, which exists in our times. 

But while he could be deceived by no counterfeit, and 
would take no specious appearances on trust, but cut 



Ch. 3.] HUMAN DUTY, 


8? 


Various ways of beginning to obey. 


The absent master. 



away, with a most unsparing hand, all false pretences, 
and all mere external show, his liberality, in regard to 
modes by which real, genuine piety should exhibit itself, 
was unbounded. All he wished was to have the heart 
right. He cared not how its feelings were evinced. 
He found a man engaged in his ordinary business, and 
asked him to leave it and follow him; another wished to 
know what he should do to inherit eternal life, and he 
directed him to employ all his property as a means of 
doing good; in another case, he pronounced an indi- 
vidual forgiven, merely on account of personal kindness 
shown to himself! Sometimes he called on men to re- 
pent; sometimes to believe on him; sometimes to obey 
his precepts. He was satisfied of Mary's piety, by the 
teachable, docile spirit she manifested, in listening to 
his conversation in her house; he pronounced many 
persons forgiven, on account of the feeling with which 
they came to be healed; and even when the malefactor 
on the cross asked to be remembered, the Savior con- 
sidered those words alone, as the External indications of 
a renewed heart. 

It is very evident that he thought it of comparatively 
little consequence what men did first, in beginning to 
serve God. The great point was to induce them to 
serve him at all. We are very slow to follow his exam- 
ple in this respect. We want to have some precise way, 
in which all men shall repent and be saved. We arrange 
the steps, and must have them taken in their exact, pre- 
scribed order, and if these steps are not followed, we 
are suspicious and afraid, whatever may be the ultimate 
fruits. We consider the case anomalous, if we are com- 
pelled to admit it to be genuine. 

A master of a family, we will suppose, goes away from 
home, leaving his sons in charge of his affairs, and giving 
them employment, in which he urges them to be diligent 
and faithful until his return. After he leaves them. 



88 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 3. 

The disobedient boys. Expostulation. How to begin. 

however, they all neglect their duty, and live in idle- 
ness, or occupy themselves solely with their amuse- 
ments. A friend comes in, and remonstrates with them. 
He gives them a labored account of the radical defects 
in their hearts, the philosophical distinction between du- 
tiful and undutiful sons, and the metaphysical steps of a 
change from one character to the other. His discourse 
is all perfectly true, and admirably philosophical, but it 
is sadly impotent, in regard to making any impression on 
human hearts. 

Another man comes to address them in a different 
mode. He calls upon them at once to return to their 
duty. 

"What shall we do first?" ask the boys. 

"Do first? do any thing first; there is the garden 
to be weeded, and the library to be arranged, and your 
rooms to be put in order. No matter what you do first. 
Begin to obey your father; that is the point." 

As he says this he goes around the premises, and, as 
he finds one after another, loitering in idleness or mis- 
chief, he calls upon them to return to duty. They are 
awakened; they see, more distinctly than they had done, 
their negligence and guilt; and as they come successive- 
ly, to know what they shall do, he points out to their 
attention various tasks, according to the age and situa- 
tion of each. His object is not merely external, but 
sincere and heartfelt obedience, but he cares little by 
what particular act, the new course of obedience begins. 

It is just so with the preaching of Jesus Christ. He 
explained the purity and beauty and perfection of God's 
holy law, and then called upon men every where to 
begin to live in conformity to it. It is no matter what 
they do first. No matter with what particular aspect 
the dawning light of Christianity first shines; let it enter 
where it will, it will rise and spread till it illuminates the 
whole. Nor can anv external action, if it comes from the 



Ch. 3.] 


HUMAN DUTY. 


89 


Giving cold water. 




Holiness is submission. 



right spirit, be too unimportant to constitute the first step 
in a christian course. Jesus Christ acted on this princi- 
ple most fully. He even said that if a man would give a 
cup of cold water, to a disciple, in the name of Christ, 
i. e. from christian feeling, he should not lose his reward! 

Nor is that remark a mere metaphor, striking and 
beautiful as it is. It is strictly true, that giving a cup 
of water to a follower of the Savior, may be the first act 
of a religious life. A man who has been neglecting or 
opposing religion all his days, may be asked by a chris- 
tian, some trifling favor like that, and the opportunity of 
promoting, even in so slight a degree, the cause he had 
been opposing, might so bring to his view the happiness 
of co-operating with God, in contrast with the misery and 
guilt of opposing him, that his heart might melt at once, 
and he might do that little deed of kindness, in the exer- 
cise of his very first feeling of submission to his Maker. 

The course which our Savior pursued is the most 
perfectly philosophical. Holiness is submission to God's 
law; and though, in principle and spirit it is always the 
same, it assumes in the heart many different forms; or 
rather a holy heart, a heart willing to submit, will exist 
in many different states, according to the object pre- 
sented to it. Hold up God's favors to it, and it feels 
grateful; present its past sins and it mourns: show God's 
goodness, and the leading principles of his government 
and character, and it rejoices. Thus holiness looking 
at sin, is penitence; at God, is joy; at duty, resolution; 
at self, humility; at human woes, compassion. In Abra- 
ham, it shone as obedience; in Job, as patience; in 
John, as love. And yet in all it is one. If it exist in 
one form, it will exist in each of the others, when the 
circumstances call for them. Job would have been obe^ 
dient if God had commanded him to leave his country, 
and Abraham would have been patient under suffering, 
like Job. We hear nothing of Joseph's penitence, nor 



90 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 3. 

Various forms of piety. The conversion of a little child. 

of Samuel's faith in Christ, nor of Daniel's brotherly 
love. But it was the same spirit, nevertheless, which 
reigned in all these hearts, appearing by different ex- 
hibition^, but in all its hundred forms remaining still the 
same. It was holiness, — attachment to the cause of 
God, — desire to keep his pure and perfect law, and sub- 
mission to his- will. This spirit shines in various hues, 
and with different degrees of lustre, according to the va- 
rying circumstances and conditions of the hearts in which 
it burns. But it is the same spirit, whether it guides 
Abraham across the desert, or inspires David's songs of 
praise; whether it leads Peter to penitence, fills Stephen's 
heart with peace and joy, — or brings thousands in the 
streets of Jerusalem, to believe in the Savior and forsake 
their sins. It is not enough, to say that these various 
christian graces are all of one family; they are all in 
essence one and the same thing: so that if one comes, 
the others will inevitably, as circumstances call them, 
all follow in their train. 

This view of the subject is of immense practical im- 
portance to all who are endeavoring, at the present day, 
to promote piety. It shows us how very various, and 
how entirely different, may be the first steps of the return 
to God. You have under your care, for instance, a lit- 
tle child. He is too young to know much about religious 
truth; — the nature of forgiveness, — the necessity of 
punishment, — the love of the Savior, — or a judgment to 
come. You can tell him of God, however; his existence, 
his presence, his holy character; and then you can just 
ask him, some morning, to do right that day for the sake 
of pleasing him. Perhaps he will not. He may. try to 
do right, for the purpose of receiving your praises or re- 
wards, without feeling, however, any desire to please God. 
On the other hand, perhaps he will. If he does, it will 
indeed be through an influence exerted upon his tender 
affections, in answer to vour xirayers j but he may be, and 



Ch. 3.] HUMAN DUTY. 91 

Spiritual darkness. The way to remove it. 

probably in many instances, children have been, under 
just such circumstances, turned to God, and led to begin 
a service, which they are still continuing in heaven. 
Many children have thus been reconciled to God, when 
they were too young to know any thing about the source 
of spiritual life within them, or even the existence of 
that Savior, through whose death alone, they were finally 
declared justified and forgiven. 

There are many modes by which the human soul may 
be shut up in darkness, besides through the weakness 
and immaturity of infantile powers. There are the in- 
veterate prejudices of an erroneous education, the influ- 
ence of mistaken friends, the colored medium through 
which religious truth is seen, or distortions and interrup- 
tions of various kinds in the channels by which it is con- 
veyed to them. If now, in any such case, means can be 
brought to bear upon the heart, so as by divine assistance 
to awaken any one christian grace, — any single truly 
christian feeling, — the danger is over. A stone is taken 
out of the firmly compacted arch of impenitence and sin, 
and the whole structure must crumble down. Listening 
to arguments for the truth will often confirm men in error, 
but doing their duty will inevitably burst its chains. " If 
any man will do his will," said Jesus, " he shall know 
of the doctrine; " and it would be well if speculating, 
doubting inquirers, all over the land, should learn from 
it, that practical obedience should come before specu- 
lations in theology; — that they had better begin to do 
God's will first, and discuss the principles of his govern- 
ment afterwards. 

But we are wandering from our subject, which is the 
fact that Jesus Christ spent all his strength in inducing 
men to submit in heart to God, and to keep his holy law, 
and that if he found them in heart willing to do this, he 
was but little solicitous about the precise act by which 
ihe new life should begin. These acts were various 



92 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 3* 

The various ways of turning to God. Forms and ceremonies. 

then, and they are various now. A young man, for ex- 
ample, having hesitated between the service of his Ma- 
ker and the service of sin, walks out alone on a summer 
evening upon the sea shore, and there, while meditating 
upon his character and condition, he resolves that he will 
hesitate no longer, but that he will return to his Maker; 
and he utters with honest sincerity, and from his heart, 
the Lord's prayer, — language which he has often utter- 
ed, though without feeling, before. His first christian 
exercise is prayer. Another, is overwhelmed with con- 
viction of sin; and suffers hour after hour, or day after 
day, under its oppressive load. At last his heart sud- 
denly feels and appreciates and rejoices in the goodness 
and holiness against which he has been contending; he 
bursts forth in God's praise, and all nature seems to shine, 
with his Maker's glory. His first christian feeling is 
joy. Another's heart melts into godly and heartfelt sor- 
row for its sins; the first renewed emotion in this case, 
is penitence. There is no end to the variety of forms 
which the movements of spiritual life assumes; and Jesus 
Christ, while he most vigorously insisted that it should 
be real, genuine, heartfelt obedience, to The Law, at- 
tached no importance to the particular act by which it 
should first be rendered. 

There is one subject more, which must be considered 
here. I refer to the view our Savior took of the forms 
and ceremonies of religion. His principle was this. He 
devoted all his strength to secure spiritual principles; and 
in regard to all its ceremonial aspects, he left religion to 
accommodate itself to the varying tastes and habits of 
mankind, and to the changing customs and states of 
society, which the progress of time occasions. It is re- 
markable how little he specified as to forms. He did not 
even arrange any form of church government for his own 
times, nor give any specific directions in regard to any 



Ch. 3.] HUMAN DUTY. 93 

Do this. Practice of the Apostles. 

christian ceremonies; an example unparalleled, we be- 
lieve, among the founders of religions. There is some- 
thing peculiarly striking in this point of view, in his 
manner of instituting the celebration of the supper. In- 
stead of having a sort of code drawn up, specifying the 
various parts of the ceremony, the kind of elements 
to be used, the frequency, and the attending circum- 
stances, — he simply says, at the close of his last supper, 
as they were about to depart, — " Do this in remembrance 
of me." This. One word contains the whole descrip- 
tion. He could not have left it more vaguely and in- 
definitely expressed; and they who press the forms of 
Christianity, while they forget its spirit, cannot be more 
pointedly reproved than by asking them to contrast the 
clearness, the point, the emphasis, the discriminating 
precision, with which Christ pressed spiritual duties upon 
men, with the unconcerned and almost careless air, with 
which he dismissed the whole subject of the most solemn 
ceremony which he established, with, " Do this, in re- 
membrance of me." 

After our Savior's death, the apostles, animated by the 
same spirit, gradually established modes of church gov- 
ernment for the exigencies of their own times. They 
modified them as occasion required, and so careful were 
they to leave no record of a mode, which might subse- 
quently be made a rule, that no ingenuity has been able 
to make out any one consistent system, from the various 
partial directions they gave. And even could this be 
done, it would be no authority for us. I repeat it, — if 
a clear and consistent system of church government and 
of modes of worship could be deduced from the practice 
merely of the apostles, it would be no rule for us. We 
are bound to believe the assertions of inspired men, but 
not by any means to imitate their practice. Their prac- 
tice was often wrong ; though this is not what we here 
refer to. It is because the circumstances in which they 



94 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 3. 

Forms of worship. Example of Christ. Changes necessary. 

were placed, — the state of society and the condition of 
the world were peculiar, and from the very nature of the 
case, they must have been left to make arrangements 
adapted to their circumstances, but which would be in- 
expedient in ours. Their practice, therefore, even where 
we admit they were right, is of no binding obligation on 
us. So that, though we are bound to believe what the 
Apostles said, we are not bound to do what they did, un- 
less we are placed in the same circumstances. In fact, 
if we are to go back at all, for the authority of practice, 
on this subject, we ought to go back to the fountain head, 
and imitate the Savior himself; that is, employ none but 
itinerant preachers, and send them out two and two! The 
conclusion is irresistible. 

JNTo. Nothing can be plainer, than that Jesus Christ 
meant to secure the spirit of Christianity, and to leave 
to each age and nation, the regulation of its forms. 
He adopted one mode, — the one suited to his purpose. 
His apostles immediately adopted another, which they 
changed as circumstances required; and it has gone on 
changing ever since, and it will go on changing probably 
until the millennium, when modes and forms of worship 
will be as various and as unnumbered, as the domestic 
and social customs, of the human race, divided as it is, 
into a thousand nations, and dwelling in every variety 
of region and clime. 

The narrow-minded view, which would have fixed in 
Judea, eighteen centuries ago, a system of organization 
to be adopted by all the races of men, and to continue 
unchanged for forty centuries, would have worked in- 
calculable mischief. Emergencies continually occur, de- 
manding new efforts, on new or modified plans. Some- 
times great denominations arise thus, and accomplish 
what existing organizations could not have effected. At 
other times gradual political changes so alter the genius, 
and character, and habits of a people, that the external 



Ch. 3.] HUMAN DUTY. 95 

Common error. One great denomination. Disastrous results. 

form in which Christianity embodies itself must change 
too. It is the spirit alone that remains stationary and 
common in all. 

And yet nine-tenths of nominal Christians, all over the 
world, are firmly believing and sincerely wishing, that 
their own denomination may extend and swallow up the 
rest, and become universal. But let us consider a 
moment, what would be the result, if such were the 
case. That one universal denomination would soon 
have leaders. It might, or might not be so constituted, 
as to have them in name and office, but it certainly 
would have them in reality. Grant, if you please, that 
this first set of leaders are really humble, devoted, honest 
Christians; what sort of men would be ambitiously look- 
ing up to their posts, and begin to struggle and crowd 
for the succession? Why there can be no moral effect 
more certain, than that in such a case, four or five gen- 
erations would place worldly, selfish, ambitious men at 
the head of the religious interests of the world! We 
have had one terrible experiment of the effects of one 
great denomination, to illustrate this reasoning. God 
grant that the dark day may never come again. 

It was the spirit of Christianity only that our Savior 
urged. He proclaimed forgiveness to all who would 
abandon their sins, and return to God, and keep the 
great moral law, which had been enacted for the general 
happiness. He proclaimed the fact that forgiveness was 
sure, and thus opened the door of hope to every man; 
but he did not say much about the dark path of sorrow 
and suffering which he should himself have to tread, in 
order to open the way. It seems as if, with the delicacy 
which always characterizes ardent love, he would not 
inform men of the sufferings he was about to bear for 
them. He told them they might be forgiven, but he 
never reminded them of their obligations to him for pur- 



96 


THE CORNER-STONE. 


[Ch. 4 


Christ's sufferings. 


Human nature. 


The way to study it. 



chasing their pardon. Even his disciples, till they came 
to see him die, had no conception of his love. They 
learned it at last however. They saw him suffer and die, 
and inspiration from above explained to them something 
about the influence of his death. They had enjoyed its" 
benefits long before, in peace with God, forgiveness of 
sin, and hope of heaven; but now for the first time, they 
understood how those benefits were procured. It is hard 
to tell which touches our gratitude most sensibly; the 
ardent love which led him to do what he did, or the deli- 
cacy with which he refrained from speaking of it, to 
those who were to reap its fruits. He did all he could 
to save men, and then, in his interviews with them, spent 
his time in trying to persuade them to consent to be 
saved. His sufferings he left to tell their own story 



CHAPTER IV. 



HUMAN NATURE, 
OR THE SAVIOR'S RECEPTION AMONG MANKIND. 



" We will not have this man to reign over us." 

In the last chapter we considered our Savior simply 
as a Teacher; hereafter we shall have occasion to look 
at him more particularly as a sufferer. In the meantime, 
we must devote a few pages to considering the reception, 
which the principles of duty he inculcated meet with 
among men. 

This brings us at once to the study of human nature; 
— and the way to study human nature, is to look at it as 
it exhibits itself in the actual conduct of mankind. If 
we examine it thus, we shall find it presenting itself 
in a great many alluring aspects Look, for instance, 



Ch. 4.] HUMAN NATURE. 97 

The village. Morning. The wife and mother 

at any of those quiet villages which may be found by 
thousands in every christian land. When day dawns, 
the gray light looks into the windows of a hundred dwel- 
iings, where honest industry has been enjoying repose. 
The population is grouped into families, according to 
the arrangement which God has made, and while the 
eastern sky reddens and glows by the reflection of the 
approaching sun, there is, in every dwelling, a mother, 
actively engaged in providing for the morning wants of 
the household which God has committed to her care. 
There is a tie around her heart, binding her to her hus- 
band, her children, her home, and to all the domestic 
duties which devolve upon her. These duties she goes 
on to discharge, though they are ever renewed and ever 
the same. She does it day aft3r day,— three hundred 
and sixty -five times this year, and as many more the 
next, and the next, perhaps for half a century. What 
patience! What persevering industry! and all, not for 
herself, but for others. 

At the proper time, all the families of the village as- 
semble, each in its own quiet home, to receive their food. 
The breakfast hour for one, is the breakfast hour for all. 
Each conforms to the customs of the others, with as 
much regularity as if these customs were enforced by 
penal laws. Every one is at liberty, and yet, in all the 
important arrangements of life, they all agree. And 
how is this agreement produced? By the regard which 
every one has for the opinions and feelings of the rest; 
a feeling which we cannot but look upon with pleasure; 
and it reigns in all human communities, and has almost 
boundless power in regulating established customs, and 
preserving the order of society. 

We next see our villagers going forth to their respec- 
tive labors. You will observe them issuing from their 
various dwellings, and repairing to their work, with as 
much regularity as if on a preconcerted signal The 
9 



98 THE CORXER-STONE. [Ch. 4 

Industry. Benevolence. Exceptions rare. 

mechanics go to their shops, the tradesman to his store, 
and the farmers to their fields; and though there may be 
here and there an exception, they continue their toil as 
industriously as if their motions were watched, and all 
their actions controlled by masters, who had the right 
and the power to exact from them a stated daily task. 
And this course of daily active industry is persevered in 
through life, and all the means of comfort and enjoyment, 
which it procures, are frugally husbanded. Sickness, 
death, calamity, may produce an occasional interrup- 
tion, and even paralyze, for a time, all interest in worldly 
pursuits and duties; but the elastic spirit rises again, 
when the severity of pressure is removed, and again finds 
occupation and enjoyment in its daily routine of toil. 

The moral beauty of ic all consists in the fact, that each 
man labors thus industriously, day after day, and year 
after year, not mainly for himself, but for others. Each 
has, upon an average, four or five, who are dependants 
upon him, and it is for them mainly, and not for himself, 
that he confines himself so constantly to his dailv toil. 

There may be exceptions. Here and there one is idle 
and dissolute, leaving the inmates of his wretched home, 
to mourn the guilt of the husband and father, and to feel 
its bitter consequences. But it is only here and there 
one; and in almost every such case, the ills which the 
sufferers would otherwise have to bear, are very much 
alleviated by the assistance of neighbors, who cannot 
well enjoy their own comforts at their own homes, until 
they have relieved the pressure of want that is so near 
them. The great majority however are faithful to their 
trust; held to duty, not by compulsion, nor by fear of 
penalty, but by a tie which God has fastened round the 
heart, and whose control men love to obey. This is 
human nature 

The reader may perhaps say that there is no virtue in 
all this seemino; benevolence, because such is the nature 



Ch. 4.j HUMAN NATURE 99 

Moral beauty. Night. The sick child. 

of the tie, by which the father and the mother are bound 
to their household, that the faithful discharge of their 
own domestic duties is the way to secure the highest 
and purest happiness to themselves. It is so, undoubt- 
edly; and it is the very moral beauty which we have 
been endeavoring to point out, that in a case of such 
universal application, the human heart is such, that it 
can find, and does find, its own purest and highest 
enjoyment, in unceasing efforts to promote the enjoy- 
ment of others. 

Thus the day passes on in our peaceful, quiet village: 
the evening brings recreations of various kinds; some 
indeed seek guilty pleasures, but far the greater number 
find happiness at home. Night brings universal repose, 
the members of each family sleeping quietly under their 
own roof, " with none to molest or make them afraid." 
Or if there is a solitary one, who prowls about at mid- 
night, to steal, or burn, or kill, he is but one among a 
thousand, — a rare and abhorred exception to the gen- 
eral rule. 

Perhaps, however, under one roof there is sickness 
A pale and feeble child, who has been a source of 
unceasing anxiety and trouble to his parents, from his 
very birth, lies in his little couch, restless and feverish, 
under an attack of some new disease. 

" Mother, your sleep has been disturbed enough by 
its restlessness and its cries. Carry it away to some 
remote apartment, and Jeave it there, to moan alone 
under it's sufferings, so that you may sleep, for once, 
undisturbed. If it should die before the morning, you 
will only be relieved of a continual and heavy burden." 

" Father, leave the little sufferer to its fate. You 
will then sleep quietly through the night, and the neces- 
sity for toil will be diminished on the morrow. Why 
should you take such pains, and bear such watching and 
such fatigue for this child ? Even if he lives, he will never 



100 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 4. 

The proposal. Watchfulness. Moral beauty. 

repay you; but as soon as he becomes a man, he will go 
out from your roof, away into the world, and you will see 
him no more. Abandon the little sufferer therefore, now; 
— send him away to a distant room and leave him." 

The proposal makes father and mother cling still more 
closely to- their suffering child, and when at midnight 
every house in the village seems desolate and still, you 
will see from the two windows of their chamber, the glow 
of lamp and fire within, contrasted with the cold white 
light, with which the moon silvers the windows of other 
dwellings. In that chamber the sleepless mother watch- 
es, with love which no sacrifices can exhaust, and no 
protracted efforts tire. It expands to meet every emer 
gency, and rises higher and higher, in exact proportion 
to the wants and sufferings of its feeble object. The 
light will continue at those windows, till the morning 
dawn extinguishes it; and as long as the loved object 
needs this watchfulness and care, those windows will 
show the same signal of sickness and suffering, as regu- 
larly and as constantly as night returns. 

There is a great moral beauty in this; and in all those 
principles of human nature, by which heart is bound to 
heart, and communities are linked together, in bonds 
of peace and harmony, and of mutual co-operation and 
good will. Some persons may indeed say that there is 
nothing of a moral character in it. We will not contend 
for a word. There is beauty in it of some sort, it is cer- 
tain, for the man who can look upon these, and similar 
aspects of human character, without some gratification, 
is not human. It is beauty of some sort, and it is not 
physical nor intellectual: — if any man chooses to apply 
some other term than moral to characterize it, we will 
not contend. At any rate, it is human nature. 

But nearly all that there is which appears alluring in 
the above views, or any other views, which can be taken 



Ch. 4.] HUMAN NATURE. 101 

Human virtue. Its two foundations. 

of human nature, when left to itself, is to be resolved into 
two principles. And these principles are such that if 
virtue can be based upon them at all, it is certainly vir- 
tue of the lowest character. The principles are these. 
Natural Affection, and Policy; the two foundations on 
which rest nine-tenths of all which is called virtue in 
this world. There is indeed, among men, a vast amount 
of industry and frugality; of faithful domestic attachment, 
and persevering performance of the ordinary duties of 
life; there is honesty, and conscientiousness, and dislike 
of suffering, which leads to many efforts to remove or 
alleviate it. But after all, for we must, to be honest, 
come to the unpleasant conclusion, nearly the whole has 
its only basis in feelings of natural affection, or on views 
of enlightened policy. The results are beautiful; they 
are essential to the well-being, and almost to the exist- 
ence of society, but, when we come honestly to analyze 
their causes, we shall see that instinctive affection and 
views of policy produce nearly the whole. God has 
taken care, so to form the human heart, and so to consti- 
tute communities, that these influences of natural affec- 
tion, and these considerations of policy, shall be enough, 
in ordinary instances, to protect the outward frame-work 
of society. This outward frame-work, therefore, is sus- 
tained very well The rest, — all that is within, the 
region of the heart, the private feelings and private con- 
duct between man and man, he has attempted to regulate 
by his law. And what is the consequence? Why what 
he impels man to do, by fixed and certain constitutional 
tendencies, and what he makes it plainly his interest to 
do, that is done. But all the rest fails. His laws are 
broken, his authority contemned, and though the exte- 
rior fabric of society is protected, as we have seen, and 
presents so beautiful and imposing an aspect, the heart 
sickens as we look at what is within. 

Take our village for instance. If we look at its exte- 



102 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 4. 

The village examined. Real characters. 

rior arrangements, how fair it seems. But the reader 
would shut this book in displeasure at its harshness, if I 
were to describe, with anything like fairness, the feelings 
and emotions which really reign in the hearts of its in- 
habitants. The children all know that God their Maker 
has said to them, " you shall not disobey your father and 
mother." They care no more for it, than for the idle 
wind. The mother who watches over her sick child, 
has perhaps a heart rising against God, repining and 
unsubmissive. It seems to be an honest village, for the 
inhabitants do not rob or murder each other in the night 
Honest! why there is not a man who will trust his neigh- 
bor to make a bargain between himself and him, without 
watching his own interests with the utmost eagerness 
They seem to be benevolent; that is, they cannot bear 
to witness any great physical suffering, and they take 
measures to alleviate or remove it. Benevolent! the 
amount of real heartfelt benevolence among them is 
shown by this fact: that if any man comes forward with 
a plan for doing good, and asks the co-operation of his 
neighbors, nine out of ten of them will believe, that his 
interest is in some way or other directly connected with 
it, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, they will 
be right! Such a view of human character, on paper, 
is objected to, and opposed by many; but still they know 
that it is in fact true. They act on the presumption of 
its truth, in all their dealings with men; and their know- 
ledge of mankind is abundantly sufficient to convince 
them, that if the hearts of the inhabitants of any village 
could be really unmasked, they would present such dis- 
closures of envy, malice, strifes, selfishness, ill-will, pride 
and revenge, as would justify the strongest language 
which could possibly be used to describe them. 

It is astonishing what beautiful, what admirable re- 
sults, may be secured in human society, by the operation 
of these natural impulses and views of policy, while each 



Ch. 4.] HUMAN NATURE. 103 

The post office. Apparent virtue. A distinction. 

individual of the community may be the abandoned slave 
of sin. The following is a striking illustration of it. A 
man may drop a letter containing a hundred dollar bill, 
into any post office in the country. He slips it through 
a little aperture, and does not know who is on the other 
side. The man who takes it up is a stranger. He pas- 
ses it into the hands of another stranger; and thus it goes 
from hand to hand, from driver to driver, and clerk to 
clerk, for a thousand miles, and at last his correspondent 
safely receives the money from some one, he knows not 
whom. And what has been its protection? A sheet of 
paper, fastened with a little colored paste: or in its con- 
dition of greatest security, a leathern bag, closed by a 
lock, which any stone by the side of the road would shat- 
ter to pieces. The treasure is thus carried over soli- 
tary roads, through forests, and among the mountains; 
and is passed from one hand to another, in a state of 
what would seem to be most complete exposure. What 
honest men these agents thus trusted, must be! is the 
first reflection. Honest! Why the writer of the letter 
would not really trust a tenth part of the sum to the 
honesty of a single one of them. They may be honest, 
or they may not, but the careless observer who should 
attribute the safe result to the honesty of the me;, would 
be most grossly deceived. It is an adroit arrangement, 
— most admirably and skilfully planned, by human wis- 
dom, and acting by means of principles which God has 
implanted, — that secures the result. The merchant 
trusts the money to agents whom he does not know, not 
because he thinks they are honest, but because he knows 
they are wise; he relies on human nature, but it is the 
shrewd policy of human nature, — not its sense of justice. 
Forgetting this distinction has been the means of a 
great proportion of the disputes which have raged in the 
world about human character. In philosophizing upon 
the subject, a writer, of a poetic turn, is deluded by the 



104 



THE CORNER-STONE. 



[Ch. 4 



No real difference of opinion about human character. 

beauty, the moral beauty, we may perhaps safely say, 
of results, which really depend on very different princi- 
ples in human hearts, from what they seem to indicate. 
They who have the most romantic ideas of human nature 
in theory, do not fail of being sufficiently guarded and 
suspicious in their dealings with mankind ; or if they 
do, they soon inevitably become soured by disappointed 
hopes, and while they panegyrize the race in the mass, 
they bitterly accuse and reproach it in detail. Besides, 
there is one proof, and that on a most extensive scale, 
of the real nature of worldly virtue; it is this, — a fact 
which no man competent to judge, will deny, — that all 
the arrangements of business in every community, and 
in every scheme of government which was ever formed 
by human skill, go on the plan of making it for the in- 
terest of men to do right, and not on the plan of confi- 
dence in the integrity and moral principle of their hearts. 
A government and a system of institutions based on the 
idea, that men were in a majority of cases, disposed to 
do their duty of their own accord, could not stand a day. 
But all this is not the worst. It is not the falseness 
and hollowness of worldly virtues, nor the vices of heart 
and life which prevail every where among men, which 
are the great subjects of the charge which God makes 
against us. It is another thing altogether, — viz. that 
men will not submit to the reign of God over 
them. This is their settled, determined, universal de- 
cision. It is called in the Bible by various names; — un- 
godliness, rebellion, unbelief, enmity against God, and 
many others. Jehovah has proclaimed a law; men diso- 
bey it altogether. They do indeed some things which 
are commanded in that law, but then it is only because 
it happens to suit their convenience. He tells us we are 
not our own but his; — we pay no regard to it, but go on 
serving ourselves. He tells us that all will soon be over 
with us in this world, and that in a very short time we 



Ch. 4.] HUMAN NATURE. 105 

Alienation from God: settled and universal. Evidences. 

must stand in judgment before him. Who believes it? 
He charges the man of wealth to act as his Maker's 
steward in managing his property, and sacredly to appro- 
priate it to his cause; the wealthy man regards it just as 
much as he would a similar claim from the beggar in the 
street. He calls upon men of rank and influence to glo- 
rify him by exhibiting pure and holy lives, in the con- 
spicuous stations in which he has placed them; look at 
the princes and nobles, the legislators and statesmen of 
this world, and see how they obey. By his word and 
by his spirit, he tells us of our undying souls, of the value 
of holiness and spiritual peace, of the deep guilt of sin, 
of mercy through a Savior, and of eternal life with him 
in heaven; men turn away from such subjects in utter 
contempt. These topics whenever introduced among the 
vulgar classes of society, will ordinarily be received with 
open derision and scorn; and the refined circles of so- 
ciety, with as decided, though with a little more polite 
hostility, will not allow their introduction. There is as 
real, and certain, and determined a combination among 
men, to exclude God and his law from any actual con- 
trol over human hearts, as if the standard of open rebel- 
lion was raised, and there were gathered around it all 
the demonstrations of physical resistance. 

It is sometimes said that the reason why subjects con- 
nected with God and religion are so excluded from con- 
versation in polite circles of society, is the fact, that when 
such subjects are introduced, they are so often a cloak 
of hypocrisy and deceit. I know it is so, and this fact 
constitutes the most complete and overwhelming evidence 
of the extent to which this world is alienated from God. 
Even what little professed regard there is for him here, 
is, two thirds of it, hypocrisy! This is, in fact, what the 
objection amounts to; and what a story does it tell, in re- 
gard to the place which God holds in human hearts. No. 
As men have generally made uo their minds to have 



106 


THE CORNER-STONE. \_C\\ 4. 


Use of God's name. 


False religions. Mint, anise and cummin. 



nothing to do with God, they are determined to hear noth- 
ing about him, unless it be in such general terms, and in 
such formal ways, as shall not be in danger of making an 
impression. We may almost wonder how eternal justice 
can spare this earth from day to day, when we reflect 
upon what is unquestionably the awful fact, that through- 
out all those countries where the true God is known, in 
four cases out of five in which his name is mentioned 
at all, it is used in oaths and blasphemies. 

The world has been full of religions, it is true: but they 
have been the schemes of designing men, to gain an 
ascendency over the ignorant, by deceiving and bribing 
that conscience which God has placed in every heart to 
testify for him. It has been the studied aim of these 
religions to evade the obligation of moral law, and the 
authority of a pure, and holy and spiritual Deity. They 
substitute for it empty rites and ceremonies, in order to 
divert the attention of the sentry which God has station 
ed in the soul, while all the unholy lusts and passions 
are left unrestrained. The Pharisees gave a specimen 
which will answer for all. Unjust and cruel towards 
men, unfaithful and unbelieving towards God, and habit- 
ually violating and trampling under foot the whole spirit 
of his law, they would go out into their gardens, and care- 
fully take one tenth of every little herb which grew there; 
and this they would carry with ridiculous solemnity, to 
the Temple of God, to show their exact observance of 
his commands! This is an admirable example of the 
spirit and nature of all false religions. Men will do any 
thing else but really give themselves up to God. They 
will go barefooted to Jerusalem, for the sake of being 
sainted on their return: they will fight under the cres- 
cent for plunder or military renown; they will build 
churches and contribute money to public charities, from 
a hundred different motives; but as to coming and really 
believing all that God has said, and giving up the whole 



Ch. 4.] HUMAN NATURE. 


107 


The door of salvation open. 


Men will not enter. 



soul to him, entering his service, and looking forward 
habitually to heaven as their home, they will not do it. 
It has been proposed to them again and again, in every 
variety of mode, and they will not do it. The proph- 
ets proposed it. Men stoned them. Jesus Christ pro- 
posed it. They crucified him. The apostles and their 
immediate successors proposed it. In the course of a 
very few generations they succeeded in bribing them, 
by means of worldly rewards and honors, to pervert their 
message, and leave the world undisturbed in its sins. 

The preceding chapter of this work opened, perhaps 
the reader thought, a very broad door of salvation, and 
would lead one to ask, who can help being saved. It 
was indeed a wide door; one which all might enter; the 
condition simple, and universally proclaimed. "Let the 
wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his 
thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord and he will 
have me/cy upon him; and to our God for he will abun- 
dantly pardon." " In every nation he that feareth God 
and worketh righteousness, is accepted of him." But 
the difficulty is, that, widely extended as the gates of sal- 
vation are, and simple as is the entrance, men will not 
come in. They do not wish to be saved, and they will 
not seek salvation. They do not love holiness; they do 
not like the idea of serving God: penitence, humility, 
broken hearted submission to God's will, and spiritual 
peace and happiness, they do not like. They want to be 
making money, or gaining admiration, or enjoying sen- 
sual pleasure; and persuasion is not merely insufficient 
to change them, — it does not even tend to change. You 
cannot change the desires and affections of the heart by 
persuasion. No; plain, and simple, and open to every 
man, as is the way of life, men choose a mther way, and 
if the few imperfect exceptions which exist, were not 
accounted for in the Bible, we should be utterly unable 
to account for them at all; so fixed, and settled, and 



108 THE CORNER-STONE 


[Ch. 4. 


Insincerity among Christians. 


Open vice and crime. 



universal a characteristic it is of human nature, to wish 
to have, in this life, as little as possible to do with Goa 
and eternity. Even the little love to God and submis- 
sion to him which exists, is so adulterated that it scarce 
deserves the name. The enemies of religion know this 
very well. They charge us with selfishness and ambi- 
tion and party spirit, as the real springs of a large por- 
tion of our pretended efforts in behalf of religion. And 
they are right. We deny it in our eager controversies 
with our foes, but every true Christian acknowledges 
and bewails it in his closet before God. 

We see thus that the great, the destroying guilt of 
human souls, is not open vice and crime, but determined 
and persevering alienation from God. The question 
whether a person becomes vicious and criminal depends 
almost entirely upon circumstances. A child brought up 
in the cabin of a smuggler, or on board a piratical ship, 
will almost inevitably become a robber or murderer; while 
on the other hand, the son of christian parents, who is 
trained up properly in a christian land, will almost as in- 
evitably learn to respect and obey the laws. But though 
they may thus widely differ in external conduct, they 
may both reject, with equal determination, all the au- 
thority of God over them. Both are equally under the 
control of a worldly spirit, though they gratify this spirit 
in different ways. 

Whenever we carry the law of God to human souls, 
and bring home to the conscience and the heart, the 
summons to surrender to it, it meets, from all the varie- 
ties of human character, with substantially the same 
reception. Take it to savages on their remote island. 
Explain the law to them, show its moral perfection; offer 
them forgiveness for the past if they will now subdue 
their passions, and cease their murderous quarrels, and 
ffive themselves up to the service of the pure and holy 



Ch. 4.] HUMAN NATURE. 109 

Salvation offered to children. Its reception. The little child. 

Spirit, and become like him, pure, and holy, and merci- 
ful and kind. Will they obey? 

Come then to a christian land, and collect an assem- 
bly of children. Describe to them the cold, cheerless 
misery of sin; call their attention to the secret corrodings 
of remorse, which they all suffer every day. Remind 
them of their ingratitude and disobedience to their 
parents, and their neglect of God; tell them how rapidly 
time is flying, and how soon they must appear before 
their Maker. Describe the moral beauty of a holy 
character, — pure, docile, faithful, grateful to father and 
mother, and filled with affection for God,— the soul re- 
signed and submissive to his will, and happy in a sense 
of his forgiveness and protection. Then ask them to 
come and give themselves to their Savior, and to begin 
lives of purity and duty and holiness. What will they 
do? They will sit still while you speak, if they have 
been trained to sit still on such occasions, and perhaps 
a few may listen with real attention; but after you have 
finished all you have to say, they will go away with hearts 
as cold towards God as if they had been indurating under 
the influence of sin for a hundred years. 

Take younger children then. Here is a little one, just 
able to run about the floor and talk, and it yet knows 
little or nothing about God. It obeys its mother's ex- 
press commands, because it finds from experience that 
some unpleasant consequences will ensue if it does not, 
and its obedience is just in proportion to the certainty 
of these consequences. Call this child to you now, and 
tell it of duties and obligations to God. Try to awaken 
gratitude, filial love, and willingness to obey him. Try 
in a word to establish an acquaintance and communion 
of feeling between its heart, and the unseen, eternal 
spirit around it, and to awaken gratitude for his favors, 
and a desire to please him and to do his will. And what 
will be your success? Why you may excite surprise; 
10 " 



110 



THE CORNER-STONE. 



[Ch. 4. 



The wealthy merchant. 



The message to him. 



you may arrest a momentary attention, you may awaken 
awe and even terror, by bringing death and a coming- 
judgment to view. But to link that heart by any sub- 
stantial tie, to its maker and benefactor, and kindest and 
dearest friend, will baffle all your powers. 

Make the experiment then upon a maturer mind. 
Here is a wealthy merchant, engaged in business, which 
abundant prosperity from God has brought before him. 
In order that there may be nothing exceptionable in the 
form and manner in which his duty as a child of God 
is brought before him, we will suppose that he is sick, 
and has sent for his pastor to come and visit him. Let 
this pastor explain what is meant by the requisition of 
the Bible, that a man of wealth should feel that his 
wealth is not his own, but that he holds it as steward, — 
agent; — and that he is bound to be faithful to the trust 
committed to him. He knows very well what are the 
duties of trustee. He understands the distinction be- 
tween agent and principal; so that no long explanation 
is necessary. Let the pastor simply call his attention 
to the point, and bring home to his mind the nearness 
of eternity, the inconceivable importance of the salvation 
of his soul, and that of his workmen, his clerks, his 
salesmen, his navigators; and plead with him to come 
out honestly and openly and with all his heart, on the 
side of God and holiness; — to let his light shine; — and 
to devote every thing he has to the work of helping for- 
ward God's cause in the world. Suppose this exper- 
iment were to be tried, who that knows mankind will 
doubt about the result. One half the christian pastors 
in the world would be so convinced of its hopelessness, 
that they would not make the attempt. They would 
not ask, plainly and directly, a worldly man under such 
circumstances, to give himself up to God. And if they 
should bring the question forward, plainly and faithfully, 
and in all its honest truth, instead of winning new con- 



Ch. 4.] HUMAN NATURE 1 1 J 

Enmity against God. The amiable girl. 

verts to God, they would, in nine cases out often, in any 
commercial city in Christendom, excite high displeasure, 
and very likely never be able to gain admission to the 
bedside again. Worldly men are very willing to sustain 
the external institutions of religion, and to assemble on the 
Sabbath from time to time, to hear praises of the moral 
virtues, or discussions of the abstract excellences of 
religion. But you cannot take such a text as this, " Ye 

ARE NOT YOUR OWN, YE ARE BOUGHT WITH A PRICE, 
THEREFORE GLORIFY GoD IN YOUR BODIES AND IN YOUR 

spirits which are God's:" and fairly bring it before 
men's consciences and hearts, so that they shall really 
understand its meaning, without awakening strong oppo- 
sition or dislike. It is opposition and dislike to some- 
thing. They say it is not enmity against God. But 
that certainly looks very much like enmity against God 
and his government, which is excited by the presenta- 
tion of the very fundamental principle of all his laws. 

But do not let us despair. There may be some one 
yet, who will admit God, though all these have rejected 
him. Here is an amiable and gentle girl; obedient to 
her parents, faithful in many of her duties, affectionate, 
kind. Let us bring to her the invitation to come into 
the kingdom of heaven. Exemplary as she is in exter- 
nal conduct, she knows very well that her heart would 
not bear exposure. Envy, self-will, jealousy, pride, often 
reign there. She knows it; she feels it, and her con- 
science being still tender, these sins often destroy her 
peace. Tell her that divine grace will help her to sub- 
due these, her enemies. She sometimes looks forward 
to future life, and sighs to think how soon it will pass 
away. Tell her that piety will dispel the darkness that 
hangs over the grave, and open immortality to her view. 
She thinks of future trials and difficulties and dangers, 
with dread. Tell her that the Savior is ready to guide 
her and be her friend; to protect and bless her at all 



112 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 4 

Apparent attention. Real indifference. Almost a Christian. 

times, to give her employment, and to be her reward. 
Spread the whole subject out before her, and urge her 
to come and give herself up to God and save her soul. 
She listens to you with respectful, and perhaps even 
with pleased attention. Do not be deceived by it. She 
is, at heart, tired and sick of the gloomy subject. She 
might like perhaps protection and happiness, but her 
heart revolts against God and holiness, and you might 
as well talk to the deaf adder as talk to her. 

Or if her heart is not entirely braced up and hardened 
in its determination to have nothing to do with God and 
religion, — : if she is really willing to listen and to read, 
— she is still just as obstinately determined not to obey. 
She is called perhaps a religious inquirer. She reads 
the Bible, and offers a daily prayer, and takes an interest 
in religious instruction; but her secret motive is to keep 
religion within her reach, because she dares not let it go 
altogether. She is still determined not to give up her- 
self to it. She can love her parents, her brothers and 
sisters, but her heart is cold and hard against God; and 
do all you can to persuade her to come out openly and 
honestly and cordially on his side, she is fixed, immov- 
ably fixed, in refusing to do it. Her religious friends 
think she is very near the kingdom of heaven. And in 
one sense, she is near. She stands at the very gate of 
the celestial city. All obstacles are removed: she can 
look in and see the happy mansions and the golden 
streets. The simple difficulty is, that she will not enter. 
If you urge her, she tries to perplex you with meta- 
physical speculations, or listens in respectful silence, and 
goes away and continues in sin exactly as before. 

And thus it is all over the world. There are many 
beautiful moral exhibitions to be seen here; many 
admirable results ; many alluring aspects of human 
nature. But after all, any honest observer must see, 
that between mankind and God their Maker, there is 



Ch. 4.] HUMAN NATURE. 113 

Universal alienation from God. Dead in trespasses and sins. 

a deep and settled and universal disagreement. They 
would be willing that God should rule over them, if he 
would leave them pretty much to themselves. But this 
he will not do. His very first and most emphatic com- 
mand is, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 

ALL THY HEART, AND THY NEIGHBOR AS THYSELF;" and 

this they will not do. It is their fixed, their settled, their 
unchanging determination that they will not do it. 

Perhaps I ought not to call it a determination; for it 
is rather a feeling than a determination, — a disrelish for 
holiness and the spiritual enjoyment of loving and serv- 
ing God. The heart, sensitive as it is in regard to its 
own rights and interests, is cold and torpid in regard to 
its Maker's claims. Motive will not act upon it. Per- 
suasion has no effect, for there is no feeling for persua- 
sion to take hold of. Argument does no good, for though 
you may convince the understanding without much diffi- 
culty, the heart remains insensible and cold; — dead, as 
the Bible terribly expresses it, — dead in trespasess and 
sins. This coldness and insensibility of the heart to- 
wards God, lead to all sorts of sinfulness in conduct. It 
takes off restraint, gives up the soul to unholy feelings, 
increases the power of temptation, and thus leaves the 
soul the habitual slave of sin. These overt acts are the 
effects, not the cause, and he who hopes to be morally 
renewed, must not look directly and mainly to his moral 
conduct, and endeavor to rectify that; but he must look 
deeper; he must examine his heart, and expect no real 
success which does not proceed from the warmth of 
spiritual life springing up there. 

I presume that a large portion of the readers of this 
chapter, will be persons who feel, in some degree, the 
value and the necessity of piety, and they are perhaps 
actually reading this book with a vague sort of wish to 
meet with something in it, which will help them to find 
salvation The book can do this only by showing yon 

10* 



114 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 4. 

The real difficulty. Spiritual blindness. The ungrateful child. 

the real difficulty; — which is that you do not sincerely 
wish for salvation. " Cease to do evil, ask forgiveness 
in the name of Christ for the evil you have done, and 
henceforth openly serve God." These are certainly 
directions which it is easy for you to understand, and 
easy to practise. The difficulty is, a heart which will not 
comply. There is a moral obligation to comply, which 
the understanding admits, but which the heart does not 
feel; and a moral beauty in complying, which it does not 
perceive. 

This is spiritual blindness. And yet, simple as it 
seems, a large portion, even of those who call them- 
selves religious inquirers, have very little conception 
of what spiritual blindness is. It is insensibility to spir- 
itual things, a dulness of moral perception, such that 
sin, though it is intellectually perceived, makes no im- 
pression, and holiness, though the word is understood, 
awakens no feeling of its excellence and beauty in the 
heart. I can best illustrate it by a simple case, such as 
parents often have occasion to observe. 

A noisy boy, three or four years old, was once run- 
ning about the house, disturbing very much, by his rat- 
tling playthings and his loud outcries, a sick mother, in 
a chamber above stairs. I called him to me, and some- 
thing like the following dialogue ensued.* 

" Where is your mother?" 

" She is sick up stairs." 

" Is she? I am sorry she is sick." 

A pause. 

* As the reader proceeds through the dialogue, we wish he would 
recollect that the case is not brought forward to illustrate -the gen- 
eral character of children. That is not our present subject. The 
story is told merely to illustrate the nature of blindness to spiritual 
things; and though true, it would have answered our purpose just 
as well, if it had been entirely imaginary. Children generally, or at 
least often, have a very keen sensibility to the guilt of ingratitude. 



Ch. 4.] HUMAN NATURE. 115 

The dialogue. Ingratitude. Moral insensibility. 

" Were you ever sick?" 

" Yes. I was sick once," said he, and he began to 
rattle his little feet upon the chair, and to move about in 
a restless manner, as if he wished to get down. 

" Oh you must sit still a moment," said I, " I want 
to talk with you a little more. When were you sick?" 

" Oh, I dont know." 

" What did your mother do for you, when you was 
sick?" 

" Oh she rocked me in the cradle." 

" Did she? — did she rock you? I am glad she was 
so kind. I suppose you liked to be rocked. Did she 
give you anything to drink?" 

" Yes sir." 

" Did she make a noise to trouble you?" 

" No sir, she did not make any noise." 

" Well, she was very kind to you. I think you ought 
to be kind to her, now she is sick. You cannot rock 
her in the cradle, because she is too old to be rocked, 
but you can be gentle and still, and that she will like 
very much." 

" Oh but," said the boy in a tone of confidence, as 
if what he was saying was perfectly conclusive and sat- 
isfactory, " I want to ride my horse a little more." 

So saying, he struggled to get free, that he might 
resume his noisy sport. Probably nearly all the parents 
who read this dialogue, will remember, as they read it, 
many similar attempts which they have made, to lead a 
little child to perceive the moral beauty of gratitude, and 
to yield their hearts to its influence. But the child will 
not see or feel. It understands the terms; — it remem- 
bers its own sickness and its mother's kindness; — it 
knows that its mother is now sick, and that its noisy 
plays produce inconvenience and suffering; but every 
attempt to lead it to look at all these things in connexion, 
and to perceive and feel its own ingratitude, are vain. 



116 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 4. 

Spiritual blindness. The horse and his rider. Insensibility 

It has no perception of it, no sensibility to it. " I want 
to ride my horse a little more," is the idea that fills its 
whole soul; and duty, gratitude, obligation are unfelfc 
and unseen. 

It is thus with you, my irreligious reader. Your 
heart has no spiritual perception of the guilt of ingrati- 
tude towards God, and the moral beauty and excellence 
of obedience to his law. You can look at the law, at 
God's character, at your own sins, at all the declara- 
tions of the Bible, but you do not feel their moral weight 
The carnal, that is, the worldly mind, does not know 
them, because they are spiritually discerned. 

Objects of natural beauty may be seen in the same 
manner, and yet not appreciated. A traveller on horse 
back, emerges from the wood, on the declivity of a 
mountain, and there suddenly bursts upon his view, a 
widely extended prospect of fertile valleys, and winding 
streams, and fields waving with corn; farmhouses and 
smiling villages giving life to the scene. He stops to 
gaze at it with delight. His horse looks at it too, and 
sees it all as distinctly as his rider does. The fields look 
as green, and the groves as shady, and the streams glis- 
ten with as bright a reflection to one as to the other. 
But while the man gazes upon it with emotions of de- 
light, the animal looks idly on, pleased with nothing but 
his moment's rest. All that is visible comes equally to 
both; but beauty is felt, not seen. Though the eye may 
bring in those combinations of form and color, which 
are calculated to awaken the emotion, there must be a 
heart to feel, within, — or all will be mere vision; — cold, 
lifeless, stupid, vision. 

It is so with spiritual perception. You, my reader, 
may understand the gospel most thoroughly, — you may 
have studied the Bible with diligence and care, and may 
see clearly and distinctly all its truths; but there is a 
moral and spiritual meaning and power in them, to which 



Ch. 4.] HUMAN NATURE 117 

The common case. Scene at evening. Feelings. 

the heart, while it remains worldly, remains utterly in- 
sensible. It does not see, it does not feel them. 

I know of nothing which more forcibly illustrates the 
cold insensibility of men to all that relates to God and 
holiness, and the salvation of the soul, than the trains 
of reflection which the unsanctified heart falls into, 
in its languid efforts to bring itself under religious in- 
fluence. Let us take one case as a specimen of tens 
of thousands. The subject is a moral, upright young 
man, with an honest respect for religon, and a distinct 
understanding of its truths. He has been taught his 
duty from early infancy, and has at length left his 
father's roof, to come out into the world; and as he has 
not espoused his Savior's cause, his conscience keeps 
up a perpetual murmur, which makes him restless and 
dissatisfied, and destroys his peace. He has, all the 
time, a resolution carefully laid up in his mind, that he 
will become a Christian before long. This makes him 
feel as though he was keeping salvation within his reach, 
and helps a little to quiet conscience. He has lately 
resumed the habit, which he was early taught to estab- 
lish, of reading a portion of scripture before he retires to 
rest. This duty he generally performs, though in a cold 
and heartless manner, so that it does not in the least 
interfere with his leading, day after day, a life of irrelig- 
ion and sin. In fact he would be ashamed to have it 
known that he reads the Bible every day. 

He has just finished his chapter, and is sitting in his 
armed chair before the dying embers of his evening fire. 
He is alone, and it is near midnight. He walks to the 
window and looks for a few moments into the clear, cold 
sky, and a slight emotion swells in his heart, as he thinks 
of the boundless distance, and inconceivable magnitude 
of the stars he sees there. The feeling is mingled with 
a sort of poetic wish that he had a friend in the mighty 
Maker of them He soon gets into a contemplative 



1 .& THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 4. 

The Soliloquy. Wandering thoughts. Reveries. 

mood, and sits down again in his armed chair before the 
fire, where a train of thought something like the follow- 
ing passes in his mind. I insert it, not for its dignity, or 
its good taste, but because it is true to human nature. 

THE THOUGHTFUL SINNER'S SOLILOQUY. 

" Oh, I do wish I was a Christian. I must attend to 
the subject. I am now twenty-five, and half mankind do 
not live to be fifty, so that probably I am more than half 
through life. — I should like to know exactly what my 
chance of life is. They say the insurance companies 
can tell exactly; — wonder how they calculate. — 

" But I wish I was a Christian. I do not know how 
to repent. I will confess all my sins now, and try to 
feel penitence for them. I will begin back in infancy 
That lie I told to my father about the book. Charles 
Williams sat on the same seat with me then. — Wonder 
where he is now." 

Here he gets into a reverie, about home and scenes of 
childhood; presently he rises up and sighs, and begins 
to walk back and forth across the floor. 

" Oh dear, how hard it is to confine my thoughts. 
Strange; — going to judgment, — all my sins recorded, — 
coming up against me, and I have no heart to repent of 
them. Can see them, but can't feel. — Mr. W's sermon 
was not very clear. I do not understand how the judg- 
ment will be arranged. Take a great deal of time. — 
Bible says Christ will judge the world. 

" But I must become a Christian. — And yet if I should, 
I must make a profession of religion. — Very public. — 
What would they all say? ." 

Here he stops to look out of the window, and seems 
lost, for a few moments, in vacancy. 

"Wonder who is sick in that house; — bright light. 
How should I feel if I was taken sick to-night, and knew 
I was going to die? — The time will come. 



Cfl. 4.] HUMAN NATURE. 119 

The confession. The cold, formal prayer. 

"But my sins. — Let me see; — I disobeyed my 
father and mother a great many times; I used to take 
their things without leave, too. — Stealing, that? — no, — - 
not stealing, exactly. Why not? Let me see. " 

He speculates a few minutes on this question of casu- 
istry, and then sighs deeply as he finds his thoughts 
wandering again, and makes another desperate effort to 
bring them back. 

" Oh! how I wish I could really feel my sins. I 
will pray to God to forgive them, and then go to bed; I 
will sit down in my armed chair and pray. 

" Oh God, look down in mercy, and forgive all my sins. 

I confess I have been a great sinner 1 have, 1 am a 

great sinner, — i", (musing) — / that's a beautiful 

blue flame; some chemical substance in the coals, — 

azure (musing) O my God, forgive me, and enable 

me to repeyit of all my sins; — beautiful; — what a singu- 
lar thing flame is, — distinct shape, but no substance. 

" O! how my thoughts will wander. I wish I could 
confine them. What shall I do? I will go to bed; and 
pray there; posture is of no consequence." 

He lies down and begins again to call for forgiveness, 
but very soon loses himself in a dreamy reverie, which 
terminates in a few moments, in sleep. 

As I have been writing the above, I have been on the 
point, again and again, of drawing my pen over the 
whole, as a wrong species of composition to. introduce 
into such a work as this. But it tells the truth. Many 
of my readers will see their own faces reflected in it; 
for as in water, face answereth to face, so the heart 
of man to man. And it shows the real difficulty in the 
way of salvation, — -a heart cold, insensible and callous; 
unbelief almost entirely darkening the soul, and pride 
destroying the effect of the little light which gains 
admission. 



120 THE CORNER-STONE. 


[Ch. 4. 


Effect of sickness and suffering. The sick man. 


A i bit. 



The difficulty seems hopeless, too: that is, so far as 
human means will go towards removing it. Every thing 
fails. In the hands of the Spirit of God, as we shall 
hereafter show, every thing does indeed, at times, suc- 
ceed; but in its ordinary operation, every means and 
every influence which can be brought to bear upon the 
human heart, fails of awakening it. You cannot possibly 
have a stronger case to present to men, than the claims 
of God's law, and you cannot have a case in which 
argument, and eloquence, and instruction, and persua- 
sion, if left to themselves, will be more utterly useless 
and vain. It is a common opinion among men, who are 
aware that all this is true in regard to their own hearts, 
that the coldness and insensibility which they feel, will 
be dispelled by some future providence of God. They 
think that affliction will soften them, or sickness break 
the tics of earth, or approaching death arouse them to 
vigorous effort to flee from the wrath to come. But 
alas, there is little hope here. Affliction does good to 
the friends of God, but it imbitters and hardens his 
enemies. Sickness stupifies, and pain distracts; and 
approaching death, though it may alarm and terrify the 
soul which is unprepared for it, seldom melts the heart 
to penitence and love. I will describe a case, — it is a 
specimen of examples so numerous, that every village 
and neighborhood in our land might appropriate it, and 
every clergyman who reads it, might almost think I took 
it from his own journal. 

A few years since, when spending a sabbath in a 
beautiful country town, I was sent for to visit a sick 
man who was apparently drawing near the grave. I 
was told, as I walked with the neighbor who came for 
me, towards the house of the patient, that he was in a 
melancholy state of mind. 

" He has been," said he, " a firm believer and sup- 
porter of the truths of religion, for many years. He 



Ch. 4.] HUMAN NATURE. 121 

Conversation by the way. The unfeeling heart. Consumption. 

has been very much interested in maintaining religious 
worship, and all benevolent institutions; he has loved the 
sabbath school, and given his family every religious priv- 
ilege. But he says he has never really given his heart 
to God. He has been devoted to the world, and even 
now, he says, it will not relinquish its hold." 

" Do you think," said I, "that he must die? " 

"Yes," replied he, "he must die, and he is fully 
aware of it. He says that he can see his guilt and dan- 
ger, but that his hard heart will not feel." 

This is the exact remark which is made in thousands 
and thousands of similar cases, and in almost precisely 
the same language. The eyes are opened, but the heart 
remains unchanged. 

We at length approached the house. It was in the 
midst of a delightful village, and in one of those calm, 
still, summer afternoons, when all nature seems to speak 
from every tree, and leaf, and flower, of the goodness of 
God; and to breathe the spirit of repose and peace. I 
wondered that a man could lie on his bed, with windows 
all around him opening upon such a scene as this, and 
yet not feel. 

As I entered the sick room, the pale and emaciated 
patient turned towards me an anxious and agitated look, 
which showed too plainly what was passing within. It 
was a case of consumption. His sickness had been long 
and lingering, as if by the gradual manner in which he 
had been drawn away from life, God had been endeav- 
oring to test by experiment, the power of approaching 
death to draw the heart towards him. His strength was 
now almost gone, and he lay gasping for the breath 
which his wasted lungs could not receive. His eye 
moved with a quick and anxious glance around the 
room, saying, by its expression of bright intelligence, 
that the mind retained undiminished power. 

I tried to bring to his case, those truths which I thought 

n 



122 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 5. 

Hopeless condition. Character of the Deity. 

calculated to influence him, and lead him to the Savior; 
but he knew all that I could tell him, and I learned 
from his replies, given in panting whispers, that relig- 
ious truth had been trying its whole strength upon him 
all his life, and that in presenting it to him again now, I 
was only attempting once more, an experiment, which 
had been repeated in vain, almost every day, for forty 
years. I saw the utter hopelessness of effort, and stood 
by his bed-side in silent despair. He died that night. 

My reader, if your heart is cold and hard towards 
God, abandon all hope that the alarm and anxiety of a 
death-bed will change it. Seek moral renewal and for- 
giveness now. 



CHAPTER V. 

PUNISHMENT. 
OR THE CONSEaUENCES OF HUMAN GUILT. 
" He will miserably destroy those wicked men." 

There are perhaps one thousand millions of men upon 
the earth at this time, of which probably nine hundred 
and ninety-nine millions entertain the feelings towards 
God which are described in the last chapter, and act ac- 
cordingly. The question at once arises, what will God 
do with them. 

The reader will perhaps recollect, that in the first 
chapter of this work, when considering the character of 
the Deity, we found that one of its most prominent traits, 
is determined decision in the execution of law. This is 
a trait which shows itself as conspicuously in all nature 
around us, as it does in the declarations of the Bible; 



Ch. 5.] PUNISHMENT 123 

Efficiency in government. Different estimates of it. 

but one which unfortunately is not very popular in this 
world. Efficiency in government is popular or unpop- 
ular according to the character of the individual who 
judges of it. An efficient administration secures protec- 
tion and happiness to the good, but to the bad, it brings 
suffering, and perhaps destruction. It is natural, there- 
fore, that the latter should be very slow to praise the 
justice which they fear; and in this world, there is so 
large a portion upon whom God's efficiency as a moral 
Governor will bear very heavily, that the whole subject 
is exceedingly unpopular among mankind. 

It is curious to observe how men's estimates of the 
same conduct vary according to the way in which they 
are themselves to be affected by it; for nothing is more 
admired and applauded among men, than efficiency in 
the execution of law, in all cases where they are them- 
selves safe from its penalties. There hpve been great 
disputes in respect to the bounds which ought to be as- 
signed to political governments, or, in other words, the 
degree of power which the magistrate ought to possess. 
But within these bounds, — in the exercise of this power, 
— every body admires and praises firmness, energy and 
inflexible decision. Nobody objects except the criminal 
who has to suffer for the safety of the rest. He always 
protests against it. 

About fifty years ago an English clergyman of elevat- 
ed rank and connexions, and of high literary reputation, 
committed forgery. The law of England says that the 
forger must die. Now England is a highly commercial 
country, and all the transactions of business there, con- 
nected with the employment, and the sustenance and the 
property of millions and millions, entirely depend upon 
confidence in the truth of a written signature. Destroy 
the general confidence in the identity of a man's hand- 
writing in signing his name, and all the business of the 
island would be embarrassed or stopped, and universal 



124 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 5. 

Severe punishment. Necessity for it. Alternative. 

confusion, distress and ruin would follow in a day. The 
man therefore, who counterfeits a signature in such a 
country, points his dagger at the very vital organs of 
society. 

The law of England does right, therefore, in affixing a 
very severe penalty to the crime of forgery, not for the 
purpose of revenging itself on the hapless criminal, but 
for the sake of protecting that vast amount of property, 
and those millions of lives, which are dependant upon the 
general confidence in the writing of a name. It is a sad 
thing for a clergyman of refined and cultivated mind to 
pass through the scenes which such a law prepared for 
him. Consternation, when detected; long hours of tor- 
turing suspense, before his trial; indescribable suffering 
when, on being brought to the bar, he saw the proof 
brought out, step by step, clearly against him, and wit- 
nessed the unavailing efforts of his counsel to make good 
his defence; and the sinking of spirit, like death itself, 
while the judge pronounced the sentence which sealed 
his awful fate. Then he is remanded to prison, to spend 
some days or weeks in uninterrupted and indescribable 
agony, until his faculties become bewildered and over- 
powered by the influence of horror and despair; and he 
walks out at last, pale, trembling, and haggard in look, 
to finish his earthly sufferings by the convulsive struggles 
of death. Sad consequences these, we admit, although 
they come only upon one; — and all for just affixing 
another man's name to a piece of paper, without any 
intention of defrauding anybody! For it is highly prob- 
able that in this case, as in many similar ones, the crimi- 
nal meant, in mercantile language, to have taken up the 
paper before it fell due. In fact he must have designed 
this, for this would be the only way to escape certain 
detection. Awful results, we admit, for a sin so quick- 
ly, and so thoughtlessly committed; but not so sad as it 
would be to let the example go on, — until the frequency 



Ch. 5.1 PUNISHMENT. 125 

Consequences of yielding to crime. Public sentiment. Petitions. 

of forgery should destroy all mutual confidence between 
man and man, and business be stopped, and millions of 
families be reduced to beggary. Better that here and 
there a violator of the law should suffer its penalties, than 
that the foundations of society should be sapped, and the 
whole structure tumble into ruin. The question, there- 
fore, for the government of that island, was simply this; 
will you be firm, notwithstanding individual suffering, in 
executing the law, or will you yield, and take the conse- 
quences ? If you yield, you open the flood-gates of crime 
and suffering upon the country; and there will be no 
place to stop, if you once give way to crime, till the land 
becomes one wide-spread scene of desolation, — famine 
raging in every hamlet,- — banditti lurking in the valleys 
or riding in troops upon the highways — and wretched 
mothers with their starving babes, roaming through the 
streets of desolated London, in a fruitless search for food. 
That was the question; and the energetic government 
of the country understood it so. The unhappy criminal 
gave every indication of penitence. He was universally 
believed to be truly penitent then, and is universally be- 
lieved to have been so, now. All England too, with one 
voice, sent in earnest petitions for his pardon. But it 
was in vain. The British ministry understood their duty 
better, and though it was perhaps as painful a duty as a 
government ever had to discharge, they were firm, un- 
yielding to the last. They gave him neither pardon nor 
reprieve; and though they would probably have submit- 
ted to almost any personal suffering, to save him, they 
were compelled to leave him to drink to the full, the bit- 
ter consequences of his sin. 

There were thousands and thousands of petitioners in 
his favor, overcome by compassion for the man. The tide 
of popular feeling was altogether against the government 
then, for men generally are weak minded, inefficient, 
yielding, when the performance of duty is painful. But 
11* 



126 THE CORNER-STOKE. [Ch. 5. 

Public sentiment wow. Impartiality. Opinions influenced by character. 

since the time has gone by, and the momentary weak- 
ness of the occasion has passed away, there has been 
as strong a tide of public approbation in their favor. 
In fact this so conspicuous and so terrible a case of 
sin and suffering, has made a permanent impression, not 
only upon England, but upon the whole civilized world. 
Every man feels it. He may not trace back the feeling 
to its origin, but it is undoubtedly, in a very great degree, 
owing to this, and precisely similar transactions, that 
that distinct, that almost indelible impression has been 
made upon the community, and is handed down from 
generation to generation, which connects in every mind, 
such strong and mysterious associations of sacredness 
with the sip-nature of the written name. From that day 
to this, every writer who has commented upon the trans- 
action, while he has many expressions of sympathy for 
the suffering, has a far more emphatic tribute of praise 
for the inflexible firmness and decision which refused to 
relieve it. 

Undoubtedly all my readers see this in the same light. 
We are, in a great measure, incapacitated from regarding 
some transactions, analogous to this, in a correct man- 
ner, on account of their coming too near to ourselves; — 
but this one can be understood ; its moral bearings and 
relations are seen as they are, without distortion; and 
the simple fact which enables us to take the view of this 
subject which truth and justice present, is this, — we 
have not committed forgery ourselves. Suppose there 
had been in the prison where this unhappy criminal was 
confined, a room full of other forgers, and their opinion 
had been asked about the justice or the necessity of 
condemning him. Could they be made to understand 
it? No; they would be vociferous in their outcries at the 
unjust severity of inflicting such protracted and terrible 
suffering for so little a sin. We however can understand 
it, for we are impartial observers We have not com- 



Ch. 5.] PUNISHMENT. 127 

Points illustrated. Time spent in sin. Fifteen seconds. 

mitted the crime, and we consequently have nothing to 
fear from sustaining the law. We rather see the value 
of an efficient administration of justice, in the protection 
it affords to our rights, and the addition it makes to our 
happiness. I have accordingly taken this case to pre- 
sent to my readers, to illustrate four or five points, which 
we can see more plainly than when we look at them di- 
rectly in the government of God. As I enumerate the 
points which such a case illustrates, let the reader listen 
to the voice of reason and conscience within, and he 
will find that it testifies in their favor. 

1. The time spent in committing the sin, has nothing 
to do with the just duration of the punishment of it. It 
took Dr. Dodd fifteen seconds, to write Lord Chester- 
field's name. He suffered indescribable agony for many 
months, and was then blotted from existence for it. He 
would have lived perhaps forty years. So that here, for 
a sin of fifteen seconds, justice took forty years in pen- 
alty. She took more; for he would have been glad to 
have exchanged death for forty years of exile and suffer- 
ing. In fact he petitioned for such a commutation. 

Some one may say that I fix too small a time for the 
commission of the sin; — that he spent many hours and 
perhaps days in devising his plans, and practising his 
counterfeit signature, and getting his bond drawn, and 
that his guilt was extended over all these. His guilt 
was, to be sure, but he was not punished for guilt. He 
was punished for crime. If the last fatal act had not 
been performed, he would not have committed any of- 
fence against human law. God might have punished 
him, but man would not; — so that, strictly and fairly, 
the fifteen seconds spent in delineating the letters of his 
pupil's name, was the whole. For a sin of fifteen seconds, 
then, there followed a penalty worse than suffering for 
forty years, and mankind have, by common consent, from 
that day to this, pronounced the punishment just 



128 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 5 

Bad intentions. Immediate consequences. Inconsiderateness. 

2. Desert of punishment does not depend upon inten- 
tion to do injury. The forger in this case, had not the 
least intention of doing injury. He could not have had 
such an intention, for Lord Chesterfield could not have 
been called upon to pay the bond without causing instant 
detection. This fact however was no reason why he 
should go free. The question was not what injury he 
intended to commit, but what injury really would follow, 
if his crime should go unpunished. 

3. Desert of punishment does not depend upon the 
immediate consequences of the sin. The evil of sin 
consists not in the direct injury of the single transgres- 
sion, but in the ruinous effects to the community, when 
it is allowed to go unpunished. The only direct injury 
which could have resulted from this crime was the loss 
of £ 4000 by one individual. Fifty times that sum might 
probably have been raised to save his life, but it would 
have been unavailing. He was executed, not for put- 
ting to hazard the £ 4000, but for endangering the vital 
interests of an immense community. The £ 4000 has 
nothing to do with the case. It would have been the 
same, if it had been £40. The sin was the forgery, not 
the endangering of four thousand pounds. 

Men are always estimating their guilt, by the time 
employed in committing the sin, or by the direct conse- 
quences resulting from -it; and fancy they deserve but 
little punishments, because they think that their trans- 
gressions have occupied but little time, and can of them- 
selves do no great, immediate injury. 

4. Desert of punishment does not depend upon the 
degree of distinctness with which the consequences are 
foreseen. The criminal here, had no idea that he was 
involving himself in such dreadful difficulty; but this in- 
consideration was no admissible plea. 

Hearts in this world which give themselves up to sin, 
are unconcerned about its guilt, and have no idea of the 



Ch. 5.] PUNISHMENT. 129 

Object of punishment. Not revenge. Moral impression. 

awful consequences which are to ensue; but this will 
not, — cannot alter those consequences. 

5. The object of punishment is not revenge against 
the individual. Nobody felt any sentiment of revenge 
against the individual here. There was one common 
and universal effort to save him, — and that by the very 
community which alone could suffer injury from his 
crime. The government would most gladly have par- 
doned him, if they could have done it safely. No one 
wanted him to suffer. The only reason for it was, that 
the suffering of the criminal in such a case, can alone 
arrest the consequences of the sin. In many and many 
an instance, has the chief magistrate of a state had the 
strength of his moral principle tried to the utmost, by 
the importunities of a whole community, and more than 
all the rest, of the wretched wife and children of the 
criminal. A weak man, in such a case, will yield. His 
desire to save individual suffering, will induce him to 
take a step which will hazard all that society holds most 
dear. Instead of any feelings of resentment against the 
individual to urge him on, there is a deep emotion of 
compassion for him, to keep him back; so that if he is 
firm and does his duty, it must be because moral princi- 
ple carries him forward, against the strong tide of feel- 
ing with which his heart pleads for the life of a fellow 
creature. 

So with God. If any of us should be so happy, as, 
after finishing our pilgrimage in this vale of tears, to be 
admitted to the happy home in the skies, God will as- 
suredly protect us for ever from the sins and the sinners 
which have brought so much misery here. He will be 
firm and unyielding, in the execution of his law; but he 
will feel for the sufferings he must not relieve. He 
takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. 

6. The object of punishment on the other hand, is, 
a moral impression upon the community, designed to 



130 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 5. 

The petition. Satisfying justice. Dr. Johnson. 

arrest the ruinous consequences of the sin. We have 
seen under the last head, that it is not resentment against 
the individual. The forger knew it was not, in his case, 
resentment that stood in the way of his pardon; and in 
his petitions, he made no effort to remove any feeling 
against him personally, but to show how the necessary 
moral impression might be made without his death. The 
following paragraph from a petition he offered to the 
king, shows this. 

" I confess the crime, and own the enormity of its 
consequences, and the danger of its example. Nor have 
I the confidence to petition for impunity; but humbly 
hope, that public security may be established, without the 
spectacle of a clergyman dragged through the streets 
to a death of infamy, amidst the derision of the profligate 
and profane: and that justice may be satisfied with irre- 
vocable exile, perpetual disgrace, and hopeless penury." 

It is evident from this, what object the petitioner sup- 
posed it to be, which required his death. And in his 
effort to avoid death, his plan was to show that the proper 
moral impression might be made on the community with- 
out it, so as, in his own words, " t o establish the public 
security" — li to satisfy justice;" expressions which are 
almost precisely those used by religious writers in de- 
scribing God's design in punishing sin, and which are 
spurned by the disbelievers in a judgment to come, as 
expressions having no meaning, or else signifying some- 
thing unjust or absurd. " To satisfy justice;" — a meta- 
phorical expression certainly, but one which any man 
can understand if he will. The great English philolo- 
gist, for it was Dr. Johnson who penned this petition for 
the unhappy criminal, will hardly be charged with using 
under such circumstances, unmeaning, or unintelligible 
language. If the man had been pardoned, a violence 
would have been done to the sense of justice which 
reigns in every man's bosom, which would have worked 



Ch. 5.J PUNISHMENT. 13l 

Salvation by Christ. Penitence. Its power in averting punishment. 

incalculable injury. It would have undermined the au- 
thority of law, and brought down the standard of moral 
obligation, and every man would have felt, as soon as 
the excitement of the occasion was past, that the firm 
foundations of commercial confidence throughout the 
empire, had been rendered insecure. 

The object then, in endeavoring to procure pardon, 
was to devise some way to prevent these evils, without 
the death of the criminal, — some way to satisfy justice, 
— and sustain law, — and make the moral impression, 
which the government well knew would be made by the 
destruction of the man. No such way could be found, 
and the poor criminal had to submit to his fate. 

What this poor sufferer's learned and eloquent advo- 
cate failed to find, for him, Jesus Christ our Savior suc- 
ceeded in finding for us; — a way by which to satisfy 
justice, and sustain law, and make a moral impression, 
which should arrest the sad consequences of guilt, and 
render it safe that we should be forgiven. We shall 
consider this however more fully in the sequel. 

7. The necessity of punishment is not diminished 
by the penitence of the sinner. All mankind know 
and admit this, excepting in their own case. Then 
they always have an undefined, but a fixed impression 
that penitence settles the whole difficulty. There is 
perhaps, as great evidence of this forger's penitence, 
as there can be, in such a case; but penitence, how- 
ever deep and however sincere, could have no power 
to arrest the consequences which the community must 
suffer from unpunished crime. If the gratification of 
personal resentment against the criminal had been the 
reason for insisting on the penalty of violated law, then 
repentance would have been a valid plea, as it would 
have removed all personal resentment, and turned hu- 
man sympathy in his favor. Repentance always in- 
creases the desire to forgive, but it never of itself opens 



132 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 5. 

It makes pardon desirable. Application of principles. 

the way. That is the distinction. I repeat it; it does 
a great deal towards making pardon desirable; but alone, 
it does nothing towards making it safe. That is, it 
does nothing towards making that impression on the 
community which the connexion of crime with suffering 
always makes, and which is necessary in order to arrest 
the ruinous consequences of sin. If, then, the question 
of pardon came up at all, in the British cabinet, the 
stronger the evidence was, that the criminal was sorry 
for his sin, the more painful would the duty of insisting 
on justice be; but the necessity of performing the duty, 
would remain unchanged. 

We have taken this case, because it is well known, 
and because the common sense of mankind, from that 
day to this, has pronounced but one decision upon it. 
The inferences which we have drawn out from it, might 
be almost equally well illustrated by any case of sin and 
punishment, which takes place in any government, pa- 
rental or political. These truths are so plain, that no 
man can or will deny them, excepting in his own case, or 
in some case which comes so near him as to bias his feel- 
ings. They are the principles which the Bible declares 
will guide Jehovah in his administration. The punish- 
ment due to trangression will not be regulated by the 
briefness of the time spent in the commission of the sin; 

— it will not be measured by the smallness of the imme- 
diate injury; — the sinner may have had no intention to 
invade the peace and happiness of God's great family; 

— he may have been entirely unaware of the conse- 
quences which were to follow; — he may be overwhelm- 
ed with consternation and sorrow when he finds what 
the bitter fruits must be: — he may offer reparation, a 
hundred fold; — but all in vain. Even repentance, sin- 
cere and humble repentance, will be insufficient to sa^e 
him. For it is not personal resentment against the indi- 
vidual, nor desire to repair the immediate injury effected 



Ch. 5.] PUNISHMENT. 133 

Nature and effects of sin. Cock fighting. War. Spiritual blindness. 

by the specific sin, which leads to the infliction of the 
penalty. If it were, repentance would remove the one, 
and a comparatively slight effort, effect the other. But 
it is not these. It is that sin, that evil and bitter thing-, 
wherever it comes, blights, and destroys. Just so far 
as it gains admission into God's dominions, peace and 
happiness fly, — harmony is broken up, — man hates and 
oppresses his fellow man, and all conspire against God. 
We feel not its miseries and its horrors because we have 
become hardened to them, and the heart is stupid and 
insensible to guilt in which it is itself involved. 

Men see and understand guilt a little sometimes, when 
it starts upon them in some new and unexpected form, 
while they are entirely blind to far greater enormities 
which they have themselves assisted to make common. 
Tne whole city of Boston was shocked a few months 
since, by the disclosure of a scene of vice and cruelty, 
which was to the mass of the inhabitants, a new and 
unusal form of sin. It was cock fighting. Cruel, unre- 
lenting wretches prepared their victims for the contest, by- 
sawing offtheir natural spurs, and fastening deadlier ones 
of steel upon the bleeding trunks. Then, having forced 
the innocent animals, to a quarrel, by thrusting their 
beaks into each others faces, till they provoked them to 
anger, they sat around to enjoy the spectacle of their 
combat. The whole community was shocked by it, for 
this was sin in anew and unexpected form, and one in 
which they had not themselves personally partaken. But 
when the same experiment, precisely, is tried with men, 
the world looks on calmly and unmoved. Military lead- 
ers bring human beings together by thousands, men who 
have no quarrel, and would gladly live in peace. They 
drive them up together front to front, and having armed 
them with weapons, of torture and death, which nature 
never furnished, they succeed, half by compulsion, and 
half by malicious art, in getting the first blows struck, 
12 



134 




THE 


CORNER- 


■STONE 


[Ch. 


5. 


Human 


insensibility to 


sin. 






Threatened destruct 


on. 



and the first blood flowing, as a means of bringing the 
angry passions of the combatants into play. This they 
call getting the men engaged! There is no trouble after 
this. The work goes on: — a work of unutterable horror. 
The blood, the agony, the thirst, the groans which 
follow, are nothing. It is the raging fires of hatred, 
anger, revenge, and furious passion, which nerve every 
arm, and boil in every heart, and with which thousands 
upon thousands pour in crowds into the presence of their 
Maker; — these are what constitute the real horrors of a 
battle-field. And what do mankind say to this? Why a 
few christian moralists feebly remonstrate, but the great 
mass of men gather around the scene as near as they can 
get to it, by history and description, and admire the sys- 
tematic arrangements of the battle, and watch the pro- 
gress, and the manoeuvres of the hostile armies, as they 
would the changes in a game of chess: — and were it not 
for the flying bullet, they would throng around the scene 
in person. But when it comes to sawing off the spurs 
of a game cock, and exasperating him against his fellow, 
— oh! that is shocking cruelty: — that they cannot bear! 
We do not realize the nature, and the effects of any 
sin, when we have been long habituated to it, nor per- 
ceive that guilt, in which we are personally involved. 
But this will not alter the case. God will cherish no 
personal resentment against sinners, and no wish to put 
them to suffering. But the awful consequences of sin 
among his creatures must be stopped: — and in order to 
stop it, the wretched souls who choose it for their portion 

MUST BE DESTROYED. 

Destroyed? It is a strong expression, but God has 
chosen it. We take it from bis word, and we may not 
use a gentler one. "All the wicked will he destroy." 

"The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with 
his mighty angels. 

" In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know 






Ch. 5.] PUNISHMENT. 135 

The alternative. Opea unbelief. Indifference. 

not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus 
Christ ; 

" Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction 
from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his 
power: " 

Destruction! It is a word in regard to which all com- 
ment is useless, and all argument vain. Perverted in- 
genuity might modify, and restrain even such expressions 
as eternal, and everlasting, but destruction, — it bids de- 
fiance to cavilling: it extinguishes hope. Everlasting 
destruction! We are left to the single alternative of 
admitting the terrible truth, or positively refusing to 
take God's word. 

Of this alternative, men take different sides. They 
who are determined to live in vice and sin, openly deny 
God's declaration. Reasoning with them is useless. Can 
you expect to find any words plainer than "everlasting 
destruction? " No: the difficulty is with the heart: Till 
this is touched, demonstration is useless: — but then, 
when the conscience is awakened, and the heart feels, the 
difficulty is over: — doubts about the Judgment to come, 
vanish like the dew. 

This open contradiction of the word of God, is, how- 
ever, perhaps a smaller evil than the lurking, secret un- 
belief which reigns in almost every heart. The number 
who openly deny what God declares, in regard to the 
desert and the punishment of sin, is very small; but the 
number of those who really, and from their hearts believe 
it, is, very probably, smaller still. Between these two ex- 
tremes lie the vast majority of the human race, — asleep; 
too faithless to believe, and too stupid and indifferent to 
take the trouble to deny. They do not reason aloud 
about it, but there is a lurking feeling in their hearts, 
that they have been sinners only for a little time ; they 
have, they think, no malicious intentions, no direct hatred 
of God; their guilt is that of thoughtlessness and inad- 



136 THE CORNER-STONE [Ch. 5 

Mistaken views. The guilt of sinning against God. Case of the child. 

vertence, and the mischief is slight, which immediately 
follows. Many a young person secretly reasons thus, 
after spending years in decided and determined neglect 
of God. The plea he puts in, is just the same as if the 
forger had urged in his petition for pardon, that it took 
him only fifteen seconds to commit the crime, that he 
had no malicious intentions towards the community in 
committing it, and that the sum which was hazarded, 
was only four thousand pounds. He cannot, he infers, 
deserve death for this. He overlooks altogether the wide- 
spread evils that would desolate the whole community, 
should the work he thus begins, be allowed to go on. 

So the sinner, a child of ten years old, who has lived 
a comparatively amiable and harmless life, wonders what 
there can be in his life and character, deserving of the 
terrific retribution which God has denounced. I will 
tell you, what it is, my child. It is not the length of the 
ten years, during which you have been living in sin. 
That is nothing. It is not the inconvenience and suffer- 
ing you have occasioned your parents. If you had been 
to them, during all this time, an unceasing source of pain 
and anxiety, it would be comparatively nothing. It is 
not the injury you have often done your playmates by 
your guilty passions; if that injury had been ten times as 
frequent, and ten times as great as it has been, it would 
be comparatively nothing. It is not that you have direct- 
ly opposed and hated God; I admit that you have had 
no distinctly malicious intention: and if you had, it would 
not. have materially altered the case. It is, however, that 
there is a great controversy going on, whether God shall 
reign or not among the beings he has made, when noth- 
ing but his reign can save them from universal disorder 
and misery, and from becoming the victims of every kind 
of guilt. The progress of sin, therefore, must be stop- 
ped. At whatever expense of individual suffering and 
ruin, it must be stopped It is a sad, a very sad thing. 



Ch. 5.] PUNISHMENT. 137 

The spread of sin must be stopped. Sin overruled for good. The forgery. 

for a child like you to linger for ever in guilt and misery, 
but it would be a far more melancholy thing for the 
rebellion against God, which has poisoned all the sources 
of happiness here, to spread throughout God's empire, 
withering and destroying wherever it comes. So that the 
charge against you, is not based upon the injury your 
individual sins have already produced, but upon this; 
viz. that by deliberately rejecting God, you take the side 
of sin and misery; you do all in your power to bring off 
God's creatures from their allegiance to him; you place 
yourself exactly across the way over which the mighty 
wheels of Jehovah's government are. coming, and the 
chariot cannot be turned aside to save you, without des- 
truction to the rest. 

But we must return once more to the forgery, for the 
sake of deducing one farther inference, and then we take 
our final leave of the illustration. 

8. Sin may be overruled so as to result in good. I 
introduce this subject with great hesitation, for it opens 
one of those obscure and boundless fields of thought, 
which are not unfrequently presenting themselves before 
us in looking into the mighty government of God. Clouds 
and mists hang over it; some objects are entirely con- 
cealed, and some we see but indistinctly, notwithstand- 
ing our most eager efforts to fix their forms. Now and 
then, the shades and darkness break away a little, and 
we get a glimpse, far on in a perspective of difficulty 
and doubt; but before we have time to fix the knowledge 
we have obtained, the clouds close in again, and all is 
once more darkness and gloom. The self-sufficient and 
shallow intellect, which never really thinks, but takes 
upon trust what its leaders tell it, or studies only to find 
proofs of what it is determined, at all events, to believe, 
never experiences, what I now mean; but no man can 
lay aside authority, and shake off the feiters of every 
bias, and come, with a free, untrammeled mind, to look 
12* 



138 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 5. 

Its beneficial effects. Moral impression. The authority of law sustained. 

into the moral government of God, without being often 
confounded and lost in the sublime obscurities which 
continually gather round his way. I make these remarks 
because it is to such an obscure and darkened field that 
I point the reader now. 

Sin may be overruled for good. It is highly probable 
that the forgery which we have been considering, result- 
ed in the most beneficial effects to the whole community 
concerned in it. " The sin and the penalty which follow- 
ed, were most conspicuously displayed. There was 
scarcely a man in the whole empire who did not know 
these facts at the time of their occurrence, and who did 
not watch the progress of the efforts which were made to 
save the criminal. Every one knew that the administra- 
tion had no malicious or resentful feelings against the 
sufferer; and that if they refused to pardon, it was only 
because the public safety, in their view, imperiously 
forbade it. Thus the attention of the whole community 
was called to the nature and consequences of this crime, 
and a moral impression was produced, which must have 
been inconceivably beneficial in its effects. It has made 
men look with a feeling of respect, almost amounting to 
awe, upon the written signature; — and attach a sacred- 
ness to it, which, though it is nothing more than a men- 
tal impression, is probably one of the greatest safeguards 
to property which the institutions or customs of civilized 
life afford. We do not mean that this instance has been 
the sole promoter of this feeling: but that instances like 
this have produced it; and this has been efficient above 
all others, just in proportion as it has been conspicuous 
beyond the rest. 

The effect of the moral impression produced by this 
forgery and its punishment, was not confined to the par- 
ticular class of offences which it brought more directly 
to view. It sustained the general authority of law. It 
spoke, in a voice, which could not be misunderstood, of 



Ch. 5.] PUNISHMENT. 139 

Good often done by the commission and the punishment of sin. 

the nature of guilt, and the ground and the necessity of 
punishment; and it sent forth a warning to every village, 
and neighborhood in the land, — a warning which has 
been remembered to this day. The transaction has been 
appealed to continually, from that time to this, in proof 
of the incorruptible majesty of British law. 

So true is this, that if an English statesman at the 
time, had regarded only the effect upon the commu-. 
nity, he would not have regretted the transaction. If 
he could have overlooked the misery of the poor crim- 
inal, he would even have rejoiced at it, as a transaction 
destined to result in immense public benefit. In fact it 
has undoubtedly often happened that a government has 
actually rejoiced in the commission of a crime which 
could be made, by exemplary punishment, the means of 
producing a moral impression, which would save the 
community from some threatening dangers. Yes; where 
the circumstances of the offence have been favorable 
for this purpose, they have actually rejoiced at it. They 
have rejoiced too, not merely that the criminal was de- 
tected, but that the crime was committed, — as it gave 
them the opportunity to arrest far greater evils than the 
suffering of the offender. The most humane and benev- 
olent magistrate, and even the teacher of a school or the 
father of a family, will often find cases, where the moral 
effects produced upon the community under his care, by 
some offence and its consequences, have been so bene- 
ficial, that he can hardly regret the occurrence. We 
may go even farther than this. If it had come within 
the power of a statesman to do it, and if he had looked 
only at the general good, and not at the sufferings of the 
individual, he could not have adopted a wiser measure, 
to strengthen general confidence in the authentication 
of a document by a written name, than by actually pro- 
ducing such a conspicuous case of forgery, and inflicting 
its punishment. Of course, to do this is entirely beyond 



140 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 5. 

Difficulty. Divine power over the human heart. The traveller. 

the limits of human power; and the mind shrinks back 
baffled and bewildered from the vain attempt to under- 
stand the degree of power which God can exercise in 
respect to the moral agency of the beings he has formed. 
Does any thing depend upon contingencies which he 
cannot control? If not, then it would seem that there is 
not any thing, not even transgression, which is not a part 
of his design. The origin of sin, and the reasons why 
it is permitted, if he only permits it, or ordained, if we 
consider him in all things absolute and supreme, is a 
subject in which the human faculties are confounded and 
lost. It opens before us one of those vistas of dread 
uncertainty and doubt, which we have already described. 
Shall we assign any limits to the sovereignty of Almighty 
God, in regard to the moral conduct of his creatures? 
Conflicting feelings tell us that we must, and that we 
must not; and reason stands overwhelmed and confound- 
ed by the grandeur and the profoundness of the recesses, 
which she attempts, in vain, to explore. We are like 
the traveller, lost at midnight, in the dark glens of the 
mountains, where frowning precipices hang over his 
head, and forests in silence and solitude stretch away 
before him. Mists float through the valleys, and heavy 
clouds hang over the summits of the mountains or move 
slowly along their sides. A momentary opening admits 
to his straining eyes a vista of grove and cliff and glen, 
which the moon, brightening for an instant, reveals, to 
him; but before he has time to separate reality from 
shadow, or to gain one distinct impression, the heavy 
cloud rolls over him again, shuts out his light, cuts off 
his view, and leaves him bewildered and in darkness. 
It is so with many a region of religious truth. The 
human mind, when it has fairly entered, is bewildered 
and lost in the mazy scene. Sometimes an opening in 
the clouds in which it is enveloped, give it a momentary 
and partial glimpse of the objects around, and while the 



Ch. 5.] PUNISHMENT. 141 

Spirit of controversy. God is to be feared. The Savior- 

thoughts are eagerly reaching forward through the vista, 
almost thinking that every cloud is about to break away 
and disappear, thick shades and darkness come over it 
again. Hope revives for a moment, as the moonlight 
beam of reason feebly shines on some new object, in 
some new direction; but it revives only to be again 
extinguished as before. Into this scene noisy contro- 
versy loves to enter, to dispute about what she cannot 
see, and to profane the sublimity which she cannot ap- 
preciate; but intelligent and humble piety stands awed, 
submissive and silent, feeling her own helpless feeble- 
ness, and adoring the incomprehensible majesty of God 

But to return, " God is love," is one part of the inspir- 
ed delineation of his character. " God is a consuming 
fire," is equally distinct, and it comes from equally high 
authority. There is however a common understanding 
among men, that they will read and appreciate the for- 
mer, while the latter is almost wholly passed by. In 
fact there is among many persons, and even among 
Christians, a feeling that God must be considered and 
represented as a father only, not as a magistrate; chil- 
dren must be taught to love him, not to fear him; and 
those terrible denunciations which frown on every page 
of the Bible are kept out of view. It is even thought by 
many that there is a kind of harshness and inhumanity 
in representing God as he is, a God of terrible majesty, 
and in holding up distinctly and clearly to view, the awful 
retributions he threatens, with any design to deter men 
by fear, from breaking his laws. But Jesus Christ 
thought not so. " Fear him," says he, " who can de- 
stroy both soul and body in hell. Yea I say unto 
you fear him." He never shrunk from bringing fully 
to view the undying worm, — the ceaseless torment, — 
the inextinguishable fire. We are too benevolent, say 
some, to believe such things, or to teach such things, 



142 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 5. 

Insensibility to God's threatened judgments. A form of unbelief. 

Benevolent! Yes; they are more benevolent than the 
Savior. He had love enough for men, to tell them 
plainly the truth; but these, it seems, have more. I do 
not speak here, merely of those who openly deny the 
declarations of the Bible on this subject, but of a very 
large portion of the christian church, who never tremble 
themselves, or teach their children to tremble, at the 
wrath to come. Many a christian reader of the Bible 
passes over its pages, thinking that such truths are all 
for others, when in fact they are peculiarly needed by 
himself. He is a professor of religion, thinks his peace 
is made with God, and that consequently the terrors of a 
coming judgment are nothing to him. In the meantime, 
he leads a worldly life, — he does, day after day, what 
he knows to be wrong, — frustrating the grace of God, 
by making his vain hope of forgiveness the very opiate 
which lulls him into sin. As to threatened punishment, 
it passes by him like the idle wind. God is a father, 
he 3ays; his government is paternal; and the language 
which proclaims his threatened judgments is eastern me- 
taphor, or, if it has any serious meaning, it is intended 
for others, not for him. This feeling extends to all. It 
is one of the forms which human unbelief, so obstinate 
and so universal, assumes. If we were to look through- 
out the Bible for the subject which is presented with the 
greatest prominence and emphasis there, and one which 
is pressed most directly, with reference to a strong and 
continual influence upon human minds, it is the unshrink- 
ing and terrible decision, with which, under the govern 
ment of God, sin will be punished; and yet how very few 
there are, even in the most enlightened christian com- 
munity, and in the very bosom of the church, who stand 
in any daily fear of the judgment to come. So settled 
and universal is this feeling, that some readers will per- 
haps be surprised at the idea that fear of God's judg- 
ments should have a place in the bosom of the church 



Ch 5.] PUNISHMENT. 143 

Christians should be affected by it. Probation. Debt and credit. 

" There is no fear in love," they will say; " perfect love 
casteth out fear." So it does, but it must be perfect 
love; and when a church has attained to this, — when sin 
is banished from every soul, — and the world is finally 
abandoned, — and God reigns, in supreme, and unques- 
tioned, and uninterrupted sway, — and every heart is 
a temple of perfect purity and holiness, — then may its 
members cease to think of the danger of God's displea- 
sure. Then; but not till then. 

The great foundation of the almost universal unbelief 
which prevails, in respect to the consequences of sin, 
rests in the heart. Man is unwilling to believe what 
condemns and threatens himself. But while the origin 
is in the heart, the intellect assists in maintaining the de- 
lusion, and this chiefly through the mistake of consider- 
ing moral obligation as of the nature of debt and credit, 
instead of regarding God's government as it really is, 
a system of probation. The meaning of probation is 
understood well enough in reference to this world. 
Young men are led to see that there are certain crises 
in their lives, when immense and irretrievable conse- 
quences depend upon the action of an hour. This is 
well known; — the principle is interwoven into all the 
providential arrangements of life. Men do not complain 
of it; they see practically its fitness. But when they 
come to look at the attitude in which they stand towards 
God, the idea of probation gives way to that of debt and 
credit, — and they go to estimating their sins, — and to 
calculating the time they have spent in committing them, 
— and they bring on their offsets of good deeds, — and 
then consider what amount of suffering is necessary to 
close the account. 

In order to show how momentous are the consequen- 
ces which often depend upou a very brief period of trial, 
let us take a very common case. A boy of twelve years 
old, brought up by christian parents in some quiet vil- 



144 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 5 

The young man. Leaving home. Allurements of sin. 

lage, is sent at last to the metropolis, into a commercia! 
establishment, where he is to commence the duties of 
active life. As his mother gives him her last charge, 
and with forced smiles, but with a bursting heart, bids 
him good-by, he thinks he cannot yield to any tempta- 
tions, which can beset him. For many days, and per- 
haps weeks, he is strong. He is alone, though in a 
crowded city; his heart, solitary and sad, roams back 
to his native hills, and recalls a thousand incidents of 
childhood; conscience, foreseeing the struggles that are 
to come, is busy in his heart, retouching every faint and 
fading moral impression, which years gone by had made 
there. He looks upon the diseased and abandoned pro- 
fligates around him with horror, and shrinks instinctively 
back from the very idea of vice. Every night he reads 
a passage in the beautiful Bible, which was packed by 
stealth in his trunk, with his father's and mother's names 
upon the blank page; and he prays God for strength and 
help, to enable him to be faithful in duty, and grateful 
to them. 

In the course of a few weeks, the world is somewhat 
changed to him. He does not love his parents, and his 
early home the less, perhaps, but he thinks of new scenes 
and new employments a little more. He forms acquain- 
tances, and hears sentiments and language which he 
must, in heart, condemn, though he does it more and 
more faintly, at each successive repetition. He engag- 
es with his new comrades in plans of enjoyment which 
he feels are questionable. Either they are positively 
wrong, or else his previous notions have been too strict; 
he cannot exactly decide which, and he accordingly tries 
them more and more, occasionally reasoning with him- 
self in regard to their character, but coming to no abso- 
lute decision. He does not think of home so much 
as he did; — somehow or other there are melancholy 
thoughts connected with it, — and he finds it less easy 



Ch. 5 ] PUNISHMENT. 145 

The Crisis. The sore temptation and the struggle. Results depending. 

and pieasant to write to his parents. He used to have 
a letter, well filled, always ready for any private oppor- 
tunity which accident might furnish; but now, he writes 
seldom, though he apologizes very freely for his seem- 
ing neglect, and expects every week to have more time. 
At last, some Saturday afternoon, the proposal comes 
up among his companions, to go off on the morrow on 
a party of pleasure. It is not made directly to him, but 
it is in his hearing, and he knows that he is included in 
the plan, and must decide in favor or against it. A party 
of pleasure, — of innocent recreation, they call it. He 
knows it is a party of dissipation and vice, — and formed 
too for that sacred day, which God commands him to 
keep holy. He says nothing, and from his silent and 
almost indifferent look, while they loudly and eagerly 
discuss the plan, you would suppose that he was an un- 
concerned spectator. But no; look at him more atten- 
tively. Is not his cheek a little pale? Is there not a 
slight quiver upon his lip? And a slight tremor in his 
limbs, as he leans upon a chair, as if his strength failed 
him a little ? These external indications are very slight, 
but they are the indications of a sinking of the spirit 
within, as he feels that the moral forces are taking 
sides, and marshalling themselves in array for the strug- 
gle which must come on. Conscience does not speak; 
-but he knows, he feels, how she will speak, before 
this question is decided. Inclinations, which are begin- 
ning to grow powerful by indulgence, do not yet draw, 
but he knows how they will draw; and the blood falls 
back upon his heart, and strength fails from his limbs, 
as he foresees the contest. It seems as if the combat- 
ants were drawing up their forces in gloomy silence, 
waiting, by common consent, till the time shall arrive, 
and the signal be given, for their deadly struggle. 

The armistice continues, with slight interruptions, until 
he leaves his companions, and having closed the busi- 

13 



146 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 5. 

Consequences of a defeat. Probation. Nature of it. 

ness of the day, walks towards his home. But there are 
within him the elements of war, and as soon as he retires 
to his solitary room, and the stimulus and excitement 
of external objects are removed, the contest is begun. 
I need not describe it; I can have no reader who 
does not understand the bitterness of the struggle which 
ensues, when duty, and conscience, and the command of 
God, endeavor to maintain their stand against the onset 
of sore temptation. Human beings have occasion to 
know what this is, full well. 

Besides, it is not to the circumstances of the contest in 
such a case, that I wish to turn the attention of the read- 
er, but to this fact: that very probably, on the event of 
this single struggle, the whole character and happiness 
of the young man, for life, depend. He may not see it 
so at the time, but it is so. If duty gains the victory 
here, her next conquest will be achieved more easily. 
There is a double advantage gained, for the strength of 
moral principle is increased, and the pressure of subse- 
quent attacks is diminished. The opposing forces which 
such a young man must encounter, in taking the right 
stand, are far more powerful than those which tend to 
drive him from it, when once it is taken. On the other 
hand, if he yields here, he yields probably for ever. 
Conscience stands rebuked and silenced; guilty passions 
become tumultuous for future gratification; impure and 
unholy thoughts pollute his mind; and though remorse 
may, probably, for a long time to come, at intervals 
more and more distant, and in tones more and more faint, 
utter reproaches and warnings, he will, in all probability, 
go rapidly down the broad road of vice and sin. All this 
is not fancy, but fact. It is the sober history of hundreds 
of young men, who go down every year to ruin, in pre- 
cisely this way. They have their time of trial; the time 
when they are put to the test; a crisis, which, in many, 
many cases, is over in a few hours, but whose awful 



Ch. 5.] 


PUNISHMENT 


147 


Sin perpetuates itself. 


Its worst effects. 


Wandering from God. 



consequences extend through a life of misery, and are 
not stopped, even by the grave. 

Perhaps it may be supposed, that all the miseries of a 
life of vice, ought not to be charged upon the hour when 
the first step was taken, but should be considered as the 
consequences of the repeated acts of transgression which 
the individual goes on to commit. We have no objec- 
tion to this at all, but it does not relieve the hour of the 
first transgression from any portion of its responsibility; 
for this very disposition to go on in sin, is the direct re- 
sult of the first transgression; and it is the very worst 
result of it. If the first sin left the heart in a right state, 
the conscience tender, and guilty passions subdued; and 
if nothing was to follow from it but simple suffering, even 
if it were suffering for years, it would be comparatively 
nothing. The greatest, the most terrible of all the evils 
which result from the first indulgence of sin, is that it 
leads almost inevitably, to a second and a third. The 
tyrant takes advantage of his momentary power, to rivet 
his fetters, and to secure his victim in hopeless slavery 
So that if a young man spends one night in sin, the great 
evil is not, that he must suffer the next day, but that he 
will go on sinning the next day. He brings heart, and 
conscience, and ungodly passions into such a relative 
condition, that he will go on. There is not half as much 
to stop him, as there was to prevent his setting out, so 
that the first transgression has for its consequences, not 
only its own peculiar miseries, but all the succeeding 
steps in the declivity of sin, together with the attendant 
suffering, which, to the end of time, follow in their train. 

All this is true, though not universally, in respect to 
jbe vices and crimes of human life. I say not univer- 
sally, for the wanderer does, sometimes, of his own ac- 
cord, stop and return. But it is true universally, and 
without exception, of the broad way of sin against God, 
from which the wanderer, if he once enters it, will never 



148 THE CORNER-STONE [Ch. 5. 

Can the sinner return'? Will the sinner return 1 

of his own accord, turn back. Take the first step here, 
and all is lost. The inclination to return never comes. 
The whole Bible teaches us, that sin once admitted, 
whether it be by a spotless spirit before the throne of 
God, or by a tender infant here, establishes its fixed and 
perpetual reign, Cannot the sinner return? the reader 
perhaps may ask. Cannot the fallen spirit or sinning 
man, give up his warfare and come back to God? Can- 
not Dives, who neglected and disobeyed God when on 
earth, seek his forgiveness and his favor now? We have 
nothing to do with these questions; the inquiry for us 
to make is, not whether they can, but whether they will 
return. The Bible tells us they will not; but with man- 
kind around us, and our own hearts open to our view, 
we scarcely need its testimony. Sin once admitted, the 
soul is ruined. It lies dead in trespasses and sins; going 
farther and farther away from God, and sinking contin- 
ually in guilt and misery. It may indeed, while in this 
state, be clothed in the appearances of external virtue, 
but it will still remain, hopelessly estranged from God, 
so deeply corrupted, and so wholly lost, that it can be 
restored to purity and holiness again, only by being 
created anew. Sin thus does more than entail misery, 
— it perpetuates itself. The worst of all its consequen- 
ces, is, its own inevitable and eternal continuance. 

The question is very often asked, whether the pun- 
ishment of sin in another world, will be suffering directly 
inflicted, or only the evils which naturally and inevitably 
flow from sin. The distinction between these two spe- 
cies of retribution is very clear in respect to human 
punishments, but it is lost at once, in a great measure, 
when we come to the government of God. It is impos* 
sible to draw the line between them, because whatever 
consequences follow, they are so uniformly, and indis- 
solubly connected with sin, that they form a part of its 



Ch. 


5.] 






PUNISHMENT 






149 


God often 


employs 


suffering. 


Arrangements 


for it 


in the human 


frame. 



nature. In fact, it is not enough to say that sin brings 
suffering, — it is suffering. Misery is, as it were, an 
essential property of it; but whether rendered so by the 
decision of Jehovah, or by an original and absolute 
necessity in the very nature of things, it is perhaps im- 
possible for human powers to determine. One thing is 
certain, however, that Jehovah does not shrink from the 
direct employment of suffering, whenever it is necessary 
to accomplish his purposes. It is an unpopular subject, 
and one which, probably, a vast majority of readers would 
prefer to have passed by; but no one can form any 
correct idea of his Maker's character, or know at all, 
what he is to expect at his hands, without being fully 
aware of it. 

Take, for instance, the human frame. It is made for 
health and happiness, and when we look upon a counte- 
nance blooming with beauty, and observe its expression 
of quiet enjoyment, we feel that the being who formed it, 
is a God of love. Hut we must not forget, that within 
that very blooming cheek, there is contrived an appara- 
tus capable of producing something very different from 
enjoyment. A fibrous net-work spreads over it, coming 
out in one trunk from the brain, extending everywhere 
its slender ramifications, and sending a little thread to 
every point upon the surface. What is this mechanism 
for? Its uses are many; but among its other properties, 
there is in it a slumbering power, which may indeed 
never be called into action, but which always exists, and 
is always ready, whenever God shall call it forth, to be 
the instrument of irremediable and unutterable suffering. 
We admit that in almost every case, it remains harmless, 
and inoperative; still it is there, always there, and always 
ready; and it is called into action whenever God thinks 
best. And it is not merely in the cheek, but throughout 
every part of the frame that the apparatus of suffering 
13* 



150 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 5. 

Uses of suffering. Jehovah is to be feared. 

lies concealed; and it is an apparatus which is seldom 
out of order. Sickness deranges and weakens the other 
powers, but it seldom interferes with this; it remains 
always at its post, in the eye. the ear, the brain, the hand, 
— in every organ and every limb, and always ready to do 
God's bidding. 

Nor is it useless; an idle preparation of instruments, 
never to be employed. It is called into action often, and 
with terrific power. God accomplishes a great many of 
its most important purposes by it. These purposes it is 
not our business now to examine, though there can be 
scarcely a more interesting field of inquiry for us, than 
the uses of suffering, and the extent to which God em- 
ploys it in the accomplishment of his plans. These pur- 
poses are all benevolent, most highly so; still, suffering, 
freely employed, is the means through which they are 
produced. All nature corroborates what the Bible as- 
serts, that our Maker is not only a father to be loved, 
but a magistrate to be feared. 

The dreadful suffering, which God has in providence 
inflicted upon communities and individuals, for the viola- 
tions of his laws, cannot be described, nor can they be 
conceived, by those who have not experienced them. 
We know, however, something of their power, and the 
awful extent to which retribution for sin has been pour- 
ed out upon men. It is far pleasanter, in examining the 
character of God, and his dealings with us, to dwell 
upon the proofs of his love, than upon those of his anger, 
but we must not yield to the inclination, so as to go to 
the Judgment, with expectations of lenity and forbear- 
ance which we shall not find. It is best to know the 
whole, and to be prepared for it; and not to attempt to 
avoid a coming storm, by denying its approach, or shut- 
ting our eyes to the evidences of its destructive power. 

Still, however, the feelings which a knowledge d 



Ch. 5.] PUNISHMENT 151 

Value of an efficient government. Conclusion. 

God's character as a magistrate, will awaken in us, will 
depend in a great degree, upon the side we take in re- 
spect to obedience to his law. An efficient government 
.£ a terror to evil doers, but it has no terrors for those 
who do well. We all love to be under the dominion of 
just and righteous laws, and if we are disposed to keep 
them ourselves, we love to have them inflexibly admin- 
istered in respect to others. If, therefore, to any of our 
readers the subject of this chapter is a gloomy one, we 
assure them, in conclusion, that they may divest it of all 
its gloom, by giving up sin and returning to duty. When 
we think of the ravages of sin in this world, the cruelty, 
the oppression and indescribable miseries it has brought 
down upon its victims, we feel that we need an efficient 
and a strong protector. We must be more or less ex- 
posed, a little longer, here, but the time will come, when 
we shall enjoy full protection, and perfect safety, and 
though we cannot but feel sorrowful and sad, to reflect 
that any of our fellow beings are to be shut up at last in 
an eternal prison, we still cannot but rejoice that the 
time will come, when neglect and disobedience towards 
God, and selfish and ungovernable passions towards 
man, will be confined and separated from all that is pure 
and holy, by a gulf that they cannot pass over. We 
know that this little planet, with all_ its millions, is as 
nothing among the countless worlds which fill the wide- 
spread regions all around it. Into those regions we can- 
not but hope that sin and misery has not yet extended. 
There may be, we hope there is, unbroken peace and 
happiness and virtue there. The destructive disease 
which has raged here for forty centuries, spreading mis- 
ery, and ruin everywhere, can be controlled and stopped, 
only by Jehovah's hand. All depends on him; and the 
only hope of our ever finding a safe and quiet home, 
where we can once more be protected and happy, de- 
pends upon the firm and inflexible decision with which 



152 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 6. 

Pardon possible. Always desirable when it is safe. 

he manages this case of rebellion. He must not pardon, 
unless he can pardon safely. He must not endanger the 
peace and happiness of his empire, to save, comparative- 
ly a few, who haye deliberately rejected his reign. 



CHAPTER VI. 

PARDON, 
OR CONSEQUENCES SAVED. 

" God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by 
our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that, whether we wake or 
sleep, we should live together with him." 

Notwithstanding all that was said in the last chap- 
ter, in respect to the necessity of the most vigorous and 
energetic measures in arresting the consequences of sin, 
there is such a thing as pardon; — forgiveness, perfectly 
free, and yet perfectly safe. There are various ways by 
which the objects of punishment can be secured, with- 
out punishment itself, — though these various modes are 
perhaps only different applications of the same or similar 
principles. The object of law and penalty is to hold up 
to the community distinctly the- nature and the effects of 
si nj — to make a strong moral impression against it, and 
thus to erect a barrier, which shall prevent its extension. 
A wise parent or teacher, who feels the necessity of 
being firm and decisive in government, will find a great 
many cases occur, in which punishment that is really 
deserved, is unnecessary; that is, when the objects en- 
umerated above, can be attained without it. Now every 
wise parent and teacher desires to save suffering wher- 
ever it can be saved, and though there is great danger 
of doing this when it cannot be done safely, still there 
are cases where it certainly is safe 



Ch. 6.] PARDON. 153 

The story of the lost. cap. The teacher's motives. 

The reader is requested to call to mind here, the story 
of the lost cap, given at the commencement of the third 
chapter of this work. It was there introduced for an- 
other purpose, but it illustrates very well, the point we 
have here in view. The course which the teacher pur- 
sued in that case, was undoubtedly far better than any 
plan of punishment would have been. Every body will 
admit, this. There cannot be a question in the mind of 
any one who understands human nature, that the course 
there described, was most admirably adapted to secure 
the object. In order to perceive this, however, it must 
be distinctly understood, what the real object of punish- 
ment is, viz. a good effect upon the community, not the 
gratification of personal resentment against the offender. 
If the teacher, in that case, had been a passionate man, 
and if his feelings of resentment had been aroused at the 
misconduct of his pupil, he never would have devised 
such a plan to save him. It is difficult to tell which 
appears most conspicuous in such a case as that, the 
wish to promote the highest welfare of the little commu- 
nity over which he presided, or delicate and compassion- 
ate interest in the feelings of the offender. Any person 
who is capable of perceiving moral beauty at all, will 
see that, in the plan he adopted, both these feelings, viz. 
firm and steady regard for the safety of the community, 
and benevolent interest in the transgressor, were sin- 
gularly and beautifully blended. The plan he adopted, 
was in substance, this: he substituted his own inconve- 
nience and suffering for the punishment of his pupil, so 
as to rely upon the former for the production of that 
moral effect which would naturally have resulted from 
the latter. We observe three things in the character of 
this transaction, which are of importance to be mentioned 
here. First, the plan originated in love for the offender, 
and a wish to save him suffering. Secondly, it was 
exactly adapted to touch his feelings, and produce a real 



154 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 6. 

Cases common. Not precisely analogous to the plan of salvation. 

change in bis heart, which punishment probably would 
not have effected. Thirdly, it secured the great object, 
the right moral impression upon the little community 
which witnessed it, far more perfectly and more pleas- 
antly, than any other mode could have done. The 
whole plan is an instance of what may be called moral 
substitution, — putting the voluntary suffering of the 
innocent, in the place of the punishment of the guilty. 
This principle, substantially, though seldom or never 
brought to view by writers on rewards and punishments, 
is very often applied. They who resort to it, perceive, 
in the individual cases, by a kind of instinctive feeling, 
its powerful and healthful effect, though they may not 
perhaps philosophize on its nature. The story of the 
lost cap, is a specimen of many cases, where this _or a 
similar principle is acted upon by intelligent parents or 
teachers. Each particular case, however, is different 
from the others, and presents the principle in a different 
aspect. I will therefore add one or two others, describ- 
ing them as they actually occurred, before proceeding, 
however, I ought distinctly to say, v. sat no human trans- 
actions can be entirely analogous to the great plan of 
redeeming man from sin and misery by the sufferings 
and death of Jesus Christ. They may partly illustrate 
it, however, some conforming to it in one respect, and 
some in another. The reader will therefore understand 
that I offer these cases as analogous to the arrangement 
made for saving men through the atoning sufferings of 
Jesus Christ, only in the general principle, viz. that of 
moral substitution, — accomplishing, by means of the suf- 
fering of the innocent, what is ordinarily secured by the 
punishment of the guilty. I will first mention a very 
trivial case. I give this rather than more important and 
extraordinary ones, because it is more likely to recall to 
the minds of parents, similar instances which may have 
occurred in their own government. 



Oh. 6.] 


PARDON. 155 


The broken stucco. 


Suffering of the innocent for the guilty. 



In a certain school, it was the custom for the pupils to 
play during the recesses, in the school-room, with soft 
balls, stuffed lightly with cotton, and which could con- 
sequently be thrown without danger. The use of hard 
balls, which were sometimes brought to school, was 
strictly forbidden. One morning, as the teacher entered 
the room, and was just taking his seat at his desk, a girl 
approached him, with a very sad and sorrowful look, and 
followed by several of her companions. She had in her 
hand some fragments of stucco. 

" Sir," said she sorrowfully, holding up the broken 
pieces, " see what I have done." 

" What is it? " said the teacher. 

She pointed up to the ceiling, where was an orna- 
mented centre piece, wrought in stucco, and said she 
had broken it off from that, with her hard ball. 

It was very evident from the countenance of the of- 
fender, and from the general expression of concern which 
was visible in the many faces which were turned towards 
the group at the teacher's desk, that she herself, and all 
the rest of the pupils, felt deeply the fact, that the con- 
sequences of this breach of law must come upon the 
teacher, as the one entrusted with the apartment, and 
responsible for it. They were attached to their teacher, 
and would rather have suffered themselves, than have 
brought inconvenience and trouble to him; and he per- 
ceived by a glance of the eye, that by this means, a 
moral impression was made, far more effectual and val- 
uable than any punishment would have produced. In 
a word, he saw that, through his suffering, the offender 
might safely go free. If no injury had been done, he 
would have noticed, very seriously, any violation of the 
law, but since the injury came upon him, and since 
the little community was in such a state that it would 
feel this deeply, the very best, the very wisest thing he 
could do, was to pass over the offence entirely. A 



156 


THE 


CORNER- 


STONE. 






[Ch. 


6 


Effects of the 


substitution. 




The 


princ 


pie 


often appl 


ed. 



rough, passionate and unthinking man, might perhaps, 
in such a case, have rebuked, with greater sternness, 
and punished with greater severity, just in proportion to 
the inconvenience and trouble the sin brought upon him; 
but he who knows human nature, and studies the adapt- 
ation of moral means, for the accomplishment of moral 
ends, will see in a moment, that in such a case, the 
mildest punishment, even the gentlest reproof would 
weaken the impression; and that the way to make the 
most of such an occurrence, would be to dismiss the 
sorrowful pupil with kind words in respect to the injury, 
and without a syllable about her sin. This, too, is moral 
substitution; receiving, through the sufferings of the in- 
nocent, the advantages usually sought from the punish- 
ment of the guilty. 

It is difficult to lay down general principles in regard 
to the applications of this principle in the moral educa- 
tion of the young, because so much depends upon the 
state of feeling of the parties concerned, at the time. 
For example, in the case last described, had the offender 
been not penitent and not concerned, and had a feeling 
of cold indifference prevailed in the school-room, in re- 
gard to the injury which had been done, the course 
taken would have been most evidently unwise, and un- 
safe. It is a question of moral impression on hearts, — 
an impression in favor of law, and against the breach of 
it, — and it is only where this impression can be pro- 
duced better without the punishment than with it, that 
there can be any safe remission. It is however unques- 
tionably true, and all parents and teachers ought to keep 
it in mind, that where any serious consequences result 
from an offence, those consequences in a wise and dex- 
terous government, will lighten, not increase the severity 
of reproof and punishment. They go far towards produ- 
cing the very impression which reproof and punishment 
are intended for, and consequently, they diminish the 



Ch. 6."j PARDON. 157 

Another case. The students and the joiners. Mischief. 

necessity of it. Those parents and teachers, who take 
little notice of offences when they are harmless, and 
punish them with severity when followed by accidental 
injury, ought to perceive that they are not administering 
moral government, but only gratifying their own feelings 
of resentment and revenge. 

In the case we have just described, the injurious con- 
sequences were not voluntarily assumed by the innocent 
individual in order to allow the guilty one to be forgiven. 
They came upon him without any consent of his. The 
following case is different in this respect. The persons 
who suffered the injury here, voluntarily assumed it. 
The case, like the former, is described exactly as it 
occurred. 

At one of the New England colleges, not many years 
ago, a company of joiners were employed in erecting a 
building. A temporary shed had been put up in the 
college yard, where the work went on, and where, at 
night, the tools were left, protected only by the honesty 
of the neighborhood. From some cause or other, a feud 
arose between some of the workmen and the students, 
and the next day, when the latter came to their work, 
they found their tools in a sad condition. Planes were 
gapped and notched, saws dulled, chisel-handles split, 
and augers had been bored into the ground. The indig- 
nation which this wanton injury excited, threatened very 
serious consequences. Some measure of retaliation was 
expected from the mechanics, which of course would be 
repaid again by the students, and thus it was feared that 
a deadly and permanent hostility would be produced. 
It was of course impossible to ascertain the authors of 
the mischief, and if they had been ascertained, punish- 
ment would probably have only made them more secret 
in their future plans. A species of moral substitution 
removed the difficulty entirely. The plan was this. 

After evening prayers, when the students were all 
14 



168 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 6. 

The proposed substitution. Its effects. Moral impression. 

assembled, one of the officers stated to them the case, 
— described the injury, — presented an estimate of its 
amount, and proposed to them that they should raise by 
voluntary contribution, a sum sufficient to remunerate 
the injured workmen. "There is no claim upon you 
for this," said he; "not the slightest. The mischief 
was indeed undoubtedly done by some of you, but it was 
certainly by a very small number, and the rest are not in 
any degree responsible. Still, by leaving their tools so 
completely exposed, the workmen expressed their entire 
confidence in you. This confidence must now be shak- 
en; but if you take the course I propose, and voluntarily 
bear the injury yourselves, you will say, openly and pub- 
licly, that you disavow all participation in the offence 
and all approval of it; and you will probably prevent its 
repetition. Still, however, there is no obligation what- 
ever resting upon you, to do any thing of the kind. I 
make only a suggestion whicr? you will consider and 
decide upon, as you please."* 

The students were then left to themselves, and after 
a few minutes' debate, occasioned by a slight opposition 
from a few individuals, the vote was carried almost 
unanimously, to assume the injury themselves. The 
money was contributed and paid. The innocent suffer- 
ed, and the guilty went free, and the moral effect of the 
transaction was most happy. The whole quarrel was 
stopped at once. The tools were repaired, and left 
afterwards in perfect safety, though as unprotected as 
before. 

It ought to be stated however, that the sum necessary, 
was a very trifling one, and its amount had nothing to do 
with the moral effect of the transaction. Any officer 
would have paid double the sum, in a moment, to have 
ended the difficulty. The effect was not produced by 
the reparation, but by the guilty individuals seeing that 
their innocent companions would assume the consequen- 



Ch. 6.] PARDON. 159 

Peculiarities of the case. The offenders not penitent. 

ces of their guilt, whatever they might be. It was not a 
measure of ways and means, but of moral impression. 

This case seems different from the preceding, in two 
important particulars. The first is, that the loss was 
borne, neither by the offenders, nor by the magistracy, 
but by a third party, not directly concerned in the trans- 
action. The second is, there was no evidence that the 
offenders were penitent. In fact the plan had no re- 
ference to the offenders at all. Its whole aim was moral 
impression upon the community. They escaped in this 
instance, not through any plan formed for saving them, 
but through the imperfection of the government, which 
had no means of detecting them. They were not for- 
given; they simply escaped. Generally, in such cases, 
the plan has two objects; to save the offender, if he is 
penitent, and to produce the right moral effect upon the 
community. Here, however, the former was no part 
of the design; it was the latter exclusively. Had they 
been discovered, and found to be still unchanged in 
heart, justice would not have been satisfied, to use Dr. 
Johnson's language, without their punishment. Still, 
the other great design, — a strong moral impression 
upon the community, to arrest the progress of sin, and 
to create an universal feeling against it, was most admir- 
ably secured through the voluntary consent of the inno- 
cent, to suffer the consequences which ought justly to 
be borne by the guilty. 

AH these are cases in which a person is relieved from 
sufferings which he deserves, on account of others, but 
it is equally in accordance with universally admitted 
principles of human nature, that a person should receive 
favors which he dees not deserve, on account of others. 
We are represented as not only forgiven through Jesus 
Christ, but as receiving every blessing and favor for his 
sake. This seems to be a moral substitution of a little 
different character, but it is exemplified with even greater 



160 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 6 

Favors received for Christ's sake. Illustration. 

frequency in human life, than the other. There calls at 
your door, late at night, a wandering stranger, and asks 
admittance. He seems destitute and wretched, and as 
it is not convenient, and perhaps not even safe, to admit 
him into your family, you very properly direct him to a 
public house at a little distance, and supply him with the 
means of procuring a reception there. Just as he is 
leaving you, you think you recognise something familiar 
in his features, and on inquiring his name, you find he 
is the son of one of your dearest and earliest friends. 
How quick do you change your plan, and bid him wel- 
come, and endeavor to repay by your hospitality to him, 
the favors you received in days long past, from his 
father. But why? It is no return to the father. He is 
long since in his grave. Why; do I ask? There is an 
universal, and almost instinctive feeling in the human 
heart, leading us, under certain circumstances, to make 
such moral substitutions, — to show favor to one, on ac- 
count of obligation to another. The apostle Paul under- 
stood this principle, when he sent back Onesimus to his 
master, and endeavored to secure for him a kind recep- 
tion by saying, " If thou count me a partner, receive 
him as myself." 

The reader will perceive that it has not been our 
object, in the preceding illustrations, to find a parallel 
among human transactions for the great plan adopted 
in the government of God, to render safe the forgive- 
ness of human sins. Such a parallel, precisely, cannot 
be found. All that we have been attempting to show is, 
that the principles upon which the plan is based, have a 
deep seated foundation in the very constitution of the 
human mind, and that they are constantly showing them- 
selves, more or less perfectly, whenever a real moral 
government is intelligently administered here. We must 
look however for such exemplifications of these princi- 



Ch. 6.] PARDON- 161 

Political governments. Moral governments. Differences. 

pies, in the government of the young, for in no other 
case in this world, is a government properly a moial 
one. The administration of law in a political commu- 
nitv, is a different thing altogether. It is simply the 
enforcement of a system of rules of action, designed 
almost exclusively for the prevention of injury. In a 
moral government, strictly so called, one mind superior 
to the others, presides over a community of minds, and 
acts upon them in his administration with reference to 
their moral welfare. He looks beyond mere external 
action, — adapts his measures to moral wants and moral 
feelings, — and aims at an influence over hearts. A poli- 
tical government, though often confounded with this, is 
distinct in its nature, and aims at different objects. It 
attempts only the protection of the community against 
injury. Its province is to regulate external actions, not 
to purify and elevate the feelings of the heart; and it 
does this by endeavoring to enforce certain prescribed 
rules, relating almost exclusively to overt acts, and de- 
signed merely to prevent injury. This difference in the 
nature and design of a political government, and of a 
moral government, strictly so called, is fundamental, and 
it applies with peculiar force to the subjects we are con- 
sidering. In fact there is, properly speaking, no such 
thing as forgiveness, in human jurisprudence. Legal 
provision is indeed made for what is called pardon; but 
this is, in theory, a mode of arresting punishment, where 
evidence, not brought forward at the trial, comes to 
light afterwards, or where peculiar circumstances which 
the strict principles of law could not recognise, render it 
equitable to remit the sentence. In practice, it goes 
indeed sometimes farther than this. In some cases tho 
executive, overcome by compassion for the criminal, 
liberates him, at the risk of sacrificing the public good. 
In others, by a common though tacit understanding, 
pardons are granted so uniformly in certain cases, as to 
14* 



162 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 6. 

No forgiveness provided for by human laws. 

amount to a permanent modification of the law. But all 
this is entirely different from real forgiveness. It is, in 
fact, only discretionary power, lodged in suitable hands, 
to modify the inflexible decisions of law, when equity, in 
peculiar circumstances, demands their modification, — 
it is not real forgiveness. Real forgiveness in political 
government has no place. We must look therefore, 
among the young, where alone we find that anything 
like moral training is the object of government, for illus- 
trations of the principles of God's administration. We 
shall find them however here. A wise parent or teach- 
er, who acts intelligently, and watches the operation of 
moral causes and effects upon the hearts under his care, 
will often, though perhaps insensibly, adopt these princi- 
ples, and will imitate, almost without knowing it, the plans 
of the great Father of all. We certainly shall find abun- 
dant examples of the operation of those principles which 
we have been endeavoring to bring to view: viz. that the 
object of punishment is not to gratify resentment against 
an individual, but desire to promote the welfare of the 
community; that it cannot safely be remitted, unless 
there is something to take its place, and to do its work, 
in producing moral impression; and that this generally 
cannot be done without the suffering of some one who is 
innocent. 

We have dwelt upon this subject perhaps long enough 
already, but it is so essential to the peace and happiness 
of the young Christian, clearly to understand it, that we 
will present it in one other point of view. Let us sup- 
pose a father, when sitting with his children around his 
evening fire, accidentally learns that one of them has 
played truant during the day. He has been guilty of 
the same offence once or twice before, and the measures 
which were adopted then, have proved to be ineffectual 
Now there are plainly two distinct feelings which may 
lead the father to inflict punishment: I mean here by 



Ch. 6.] 


PARDON 


163 


Two motives for punishment. 




Their operation in this case. 



punishment, any means whatever of giving him pain, 
either by severe reproof, or deprivation of enjoyment, or 
direct suffering. There are two distinct feelings which 
may prompt him to inflict punishment. First he may be 
a passionate man, and feel personal resentment against 
the boy, and punish him under the influence of those 
feelings; — a case exceedingly common. Secondly, with- 
out feeling any resentment, but rather looking with ten- 
der compassion upon his son, he may see the necessity 
of doing something effectual to stop this incipient sin, 
and to prevent its extending to his other children. If 
now the former is the father's feeling, — an emotion of 
resentment and passion, on account of the trouble which 
the fault has caused, and is likely to cause him, there is 
no hope for the poor offender; — resentment can only be 
gratified by the suffering of the object of it. If, on the 
other hand, the feeling is only a calm, though perhaps 
anxious regard for the moral safety and happiness of his 
family, there is some hope ; for punishment in this case, 
would only be resorted to on account of its promoting 
this safety and happiness, by the moral impression it 
would make, and there may perhaps be some other way 
of accomplishing this object. But let us look at this 
more particularly. 

The reason why truancy is so serious an evil, is not 
the loss of a day or two at school, now and then, — or 
any other immediate and direct consequence of it. It 
is because it is the beginning of a long course of sin; it 
leads to bad company, and to deception, and to vicious 
habits; it stops the progress of preparation for the duties 
of life, and hardens the heart, and opens the door for 
every temptation and sin, which, if not closed, must 
bring the poor victim to ruin. These are what consti- 
tute its dangers. Now the difficulty with the boy is, 
that he does not see these things. He is spiritually 
blind, and argument and persuasion will not open his 



164 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 8 

Substitute for punishment. The father's plan. Visit to the poorhouse. 

eyes. Punishment is therefore necessary to make such 
an impression upon his mind and that of the others, as to 
arrest the progress of the sin. It may be confinement. 
It may be some disgrace or deprivation; or suffering in 
any other form. If it is however judiciously administer- 
ed, and in a proper spirit, it must have an effect, and 
it may remove the evil altogether. 

But there may be some other way of accomplishing 
the object, — that is, of producing the needed impression. 
Let us suppose such a way. Let us imagine that after 
learning that his son had been guilty of the offence, 
the father gives no indications of resentment, or any 
other personal feeling, but begins to think what he can 
do to arrest the evil, without bringing suffering upon his 
boy. At last he says, "My boys: I want you all to 
understand what the real nature of truancy is. I shall, 
however, say no more about it now, but to-morrow I 
shall wish you to go and take a walk with me." 

The boys look forward with eager interest to the time, 
and when it arrives, the father takes them to a neigh- 
boring poorhouse, where lies a man sick, and suffering 
excruciating pains under the power of diseases brought 
on by vice. We may suppose the father to have been 
accidentally acquainted with the case. The boys enter 
the large and dreary apartment, crowded with beds, ten- 
anted by misery in e\ery form; for there is an apartment 
in every extensive poorhouse, where you may see the 
very extreme of human wo, — the last earthly stage of 
the broad road, — where life lingers in forms of most 
excessive misery, as if to show how much the mysterious 
principle can endure. On one narrow couch, foaming 
mania glares at you, — on another lies sightless, sense- 
less, torpid old age, a picture of indescribable decrep- 
itude and deformity; — from a third, you hear the groans 
and see the restless tossing of acute suffering, — and 
gibbering idiocy laughs upon a fourth, with a noise which 



Ch. 6.] PARDON. 165 

The scene. The abandoned. Consequences of truancy- 

grates more harshly upon the feelings than the deepest 
groans. 

Into such a scene the father enters, followed by his 
sons, pale and trembling, for it is a scene which they 
have scarcely nerve to endure. The attendant, knowing 
whom they wish to see, precedes them, guiding them to a 
bed in the corner, where lies the only patient in the room 
who has mind enough left to be conscious who, and what, 
and where he is. He has covered his head, in the vain 
effort to hide from the horrors of his last earthly home. 
The attendant raises the corner of the blanket which 
covers him, and the visiters see there a haggard face, 
with its two glazed and motionless eyes rolled up towards 
them and staring wildly from their sunken sockets. 

The visiter has brought the wretched patient some 
little comfort or luxury, which may amuse and gratify 
him a moment, though it cannot relieve. He then falls 
into conversation with him, and the boys who stand by, 
learn something of the progress and the termination of a 
life of vice and crime. The father carries him back to 
early childhood, and learns from the sufferer's own lips, 
that truancy and the bad company which it led him into, 
were the first steps of his wretched course. 

Now there is nothing unnatural in all this. Precisely 
such an experiment may never have been made, but 
plans for producing moral impressions exactly analogous 
to it, have been successfully adopted a thousand times,, 
and every reader will see that if such a plan were adopt- 
ed, and if the hearts of the boys were in such a state as 
deeply to feel it, it would, in this case, have rendered all 
farther proceedings unnecessary. If the guilty one's 
heart was^really touched by the scene, so that he should 
go home penitent and humbled, and resolved to sin no 
more, it would be perfectly safe to forgive him. And 
the point to be kept most distinctly in view in the case, 
i — the point which it is, in fact, the whole design of the 



166 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 6. 

Moral impression made by the death of Christ. 

case to illustrate, is, that free forgiveness, which would 
be dangerous alone, may be rendered safe by measures 
ingeniously and judiciously adopted, which shall produce 
the same moral impression upon the community which 
punishment would have made; and that the moral Gov- 
ernor who is actuated by a calm regard for the general 
good, and not by personal resentment, will devise such 
measures if he can. It is the great glory of the gospel 
of Jesus Christ, that it thus provides a way for the safe 
forgiveness of sin. We are taken to the cross, and we 
see the nature and effects of sin there; and the great 
sacrifice which was made on Calvary, goes instead of 
the just punishment of men, to make that great moral 
impression which is necessary to sustain law, and satisfy 
justice, and arrest the consequences of sin. 

The imaginary case we have been describing, is evi- 
dently very different in many respects, from the plan of 
salvation by the sacrifice of the Son of God. It would 
have resembled it more closely if, instead of one offender, 
we had supposed two, one of whom should be affected 
and led to penitence by the scene he witnessed, while 
the other remained hard-hearted and stubborn. The 
father would then have felt compelled, while he forgave 
the one, to take some farther measures with the other. 
The resemblance would have been closer still, if instead 
of showing the boys some existing misery, an innocent 
brother could, in some mysterious way, himself have 
voluntarily assumed for a time, the sufferings which 
were the inevitable consequences of the sin. These 
changes, however, and many others designed to make it 
correspond more closely with the original, do not alter 
its nature, or touch the great principle which it brings 
to view: viz. that to render it safe to forgive sin, some 
plan must be divised, for producing, by other means, the 
moral effects for which punishment is intended. 

We have, in former chapters, taken a view of two 



Ch. 6.] PARDON. 167 

Extent and power of it undeniable. Its present influence. 

great objects for which the Son of God appeared here, 
to set us an example, and to teach us, by precept, our 
duty. We have considered the nature of the example, 
and also the system of duty which he held up to men. 
We now come, however, to look at another great design, 
far greater, probably, than either of those, to make, by 
perfect obedience during his life, and the sufferings he 
endured at the close of it, such an exhibition of the 
nature, and the effects of sin, and such an expiation for 
human transgressions, as should render it safe to forgive 
all who are penitent. He came, in other words, not only 
to teach us duty, and to set an example of its perform- 
ance, but to suffer for us, and to make, by that suffering, 
a moral impression on the great community of intelli- 
gent beings, which should go instead of our punishment, 
and render it safe that we should be forgiven. 

It has made such an impression. It is now eighteen 
centuries since that death occurred, and among all the 
varieties of opinion which have been adopted in regard 
to it, by Atheist, Deist, and Christian, in one point all 
must agree, that the death of Jesus Christ has made a 
stronger impression upon the human race, th-an any other 
transaction since the creation of the world. In the re- 
mote and subjugated province where it occurred, it was 
witnessed, indeed, only by a few thousands, and they 
looked upon it with little more interest than would have 
been excited by the execution of any other object of 
popular fury; they perhaps supposed too, that in a few 
months, it would be forgotten. But no. In a very few 
weeks, it was the means of arresting the attention, and 
subduing the hearts, and altering the characters and lives 
of thousands. The tidings of the transaction, and the 
explanation of it, spread like a flame. The walls of the 
city could not confine it; the boundaries of the province 
could not confine it. The influence of wealth, and the 
coercion of military power, were equally insufficient to 



168 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 6. 

Its prospective influence. Necessity of atonement. 

stop its progress, or to prevent its effects. It shook the 
Roman empire to its foundations, — and now, eighteen 
centuries from the time of its occurrence, it holds ascen- 
dency over more hearts than it ever did before, and it 
is an ascendency which is widening, deepening and 
strengthening, and promises to spread to every nation, 
and to every family on the globe. 

This impression, too, is of the right kind. A know- 
ledge of the death of Christ, with the explanation of it 
given in the Scriptures, touches men's hearts, — it shows 
the nature and the tendencies of sin, — it produces fear 
of God's displeasure, — and resolution to return to duty, 
and thus produces effects by which justice is satisfied, 
and the authority of law sustained, far better in fact, 
man it would be by the severest punishment of the guilty 
sinner 

There has always been in human hearts, a feeling of 
the necessity of some provision to render safe the for- 
giveness of sin. Penitence has never been enough to 
quiet conscience. Hence self-inflicted sufferings and 
sacrifices for sin, which have prevailed in every age. 
The latter was the institution established by divine 
authority to typify the great sacrifice which was to come 
at last. But though established by divine command, it 
could not have spread so far, and have been so constantly 
and universally observed by men, if there had not been 
some strong and deeply seated feelings in the human 
heart with which it chimed. 

Though, as the Apostle informs us, the blood of bulls 
and of goats could not take away sin, that is, it was not 
sufficient to render punishment unnecessary, still the 
institution, as regulated by God's commands to Moses, 
was admirably adapted to the moral condition and wants 
of men. One of the most brief and lucid descriptions of 
it is contained in the following passage 



Ch. 6.] PARDON. 169 

Sacrifices. Reparation required. Sincere repentance. 

" And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, If a soul 
sin, and commit a trespass against the Lord, and lie unto 
his neighbor in that which was delivered him to keep, or 
in fellowship, or in a thing taken away by violence, or 
hath deceived his neighbor; or have found that which 
was lost, and lieth concerning it, and sweareth falsely; 
in any of all these that a man doeth, sinning therein: 

Then it shall be, because he hath sinned and is guilty, 
that he shall restore that which he took violently away, 
or the thing which he hath deceitfully gotten, or that 
which was delivered to him to keep, or the lost thing 
which he found, or all that about which he hath sworn 
falsely: he shall even restore it in the principal, and 
shall add the fifth part more thereto, and give it unto 
him to whom it appertaineth, in the day of his trespass 
offering. 

And he shall bring his trespass offering unto the Lord, 
a ram without blemish out of the flock, with thy estima- 
tion, for a trespass offering unto the priest: and the priest 
shall make an atonement for him before the Lord; and it 
shall be forgiven him, for any thing of all that he hath 
done in trespassing therein." Leviticus 1: 1 — 7. 

The first thing that attracts our notice in this provision 
is, that reparation, — full reparation for all the injury, 
must be made, as the first step towards a reconciliation 
with God. Another interesting thought is, that the ani- 
mal required to be brought for the sacrifice was one 
which in ordinary cases would probably be an object of 
value to the offender; for in pastoral life, men almost love 
their flocks and herds, and the owner of the innocent 
victim, one would suppose, could not see its blood flow- 
ing for his sins, without being moved. Still, however, it 
was not chiefly on this account, i. e. the direct moral 
effect of the transaction upon him, that the sinner was 
required to bring his offering, but it was to remind him 
15 



170 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 6. 

Principles of moral government. Application of the subject. 

habitually, that something was necessary to open the 
way for his forgiveness, besides mere repentance and 
reparation, and thus to bring him to the right state of 
heart to be saved by means of the real propitiation which 
was at length to be made. The manner in which David 
speaks of this subject, shows that it was generally under- 
stood that this duty was not intended to be an empty 
form. " Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give 
it; thou delightest not in burnt-offering. The sacrifices 
of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite 
heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." Psalm, 51: 16, 17. 
We have now accomplished the plan which we had 
marked out for this chapter, which was the exhibition 
of some of the principles upon which the pardon of sin 
can safely be bestowed. These principles are in sub- 
stance as follows. The design of God in connecting 
such severe and lasting sufferings with sin, is not resent- 
ment against the sinner, but a calm and benevolent 
interest in the general good. He wishes no one to suf- 
fer, and has accordingly provided a way by which he 
can accomplish more perfectly what would have been 
accomplished by the inflexible execution of the law. 
By this means, the way is open for our forgiveness, if 
we are penitent for our sins. The circumstances of this 
sacrifice will be considered more fully in a subsequent 
chapter; the design of this has been only to explain 
some of the acknowledged principles on which the ne- 
cessity of it is grounded. This object is now accom- 
plished; but before closing the chapter, we wish to 
devote a few pages to turning this subject to a practical 
account. 

There are a great many persons to whose wounded 
spirits, the truths advanced here would be balm, if they 
would apply them. Many a thoughtful reader of such a 
work as this, is often in a state of mental anxiety and 



Ch. 6.] PARDON 171 

Address to the inquirer. Source of anxiety. Remedy. 

suffering, which the subject of this chapter is exactly 
calculated to relieve. You feel that you are a great 
sinner, and though this feeling produces no powerful 
and overwhelming conviction, it still destroys your peace, 
and fills you with uneasiness, which, though it may 
be sometimes interrupted, returns again with increased 
power, at every hour of reflection, and especially in sol- 
itude. You wish you were a Christian, you say. I will 
suppose that you really do. Many persons who say 
that, really mean only that they wish for the benefits of 
piety, not for piety itself. They would like the rewards 
of the Savior, but they do not like his service. I will 
suppose, however, that you really wish to be his. It is 
possible that you do, and yet you may not have found 
peace; you think there is some love for the Savior in 
your heart, some interest in his cause, some desire to 
serve him, and yet do not feel relieved from the burden 
of sins, and are not cheered with the spiritual peace and 
joy which beam in the hearts of others. Now the cause 
of your restless unhappiness, is a burdened conscience; 
— a burdened conscience. There is a sort of instinctive 
feeling, or if not instinctive, it is interwoven with all the 
inmost sentiments of the soul, that guilt deserves pun- 
ishment. You feel that you are guilty. You know 
that God is an efficient governor, — a God of terrible 
majesty, — for whatever men may. say, there is something 
in the heart, which testifies that it is an evil and bitter 
thing to sin against God, and that the soul which gives 
itself up to sin, must expect to feel the weight of divine 
displeasure. You know this, and you feel it, and though 
you ask forgiveness, you do not realize that it can safe- 
ly be bestowed. Now the remedy is simple, and effect- 
ual. It is for you to come in faith to the cross op 
Jesus Christ. 

Let me explain precisely what I mean by this. Your 
conscience is uneasy, being burdened by the load of 



172 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch 6. 

Anxiety needless. Redemption fully purchased. 

your past sins. Perhaps you do not distinctly fear pun- 
ishment, but it is the sense of responsibility for sin, and 
an undefined dread of something that is yet to come, 
which really destroys your rest. Now why have you 
any thing to fear? Why should God ever call you to 
account for those sins? It must be either from personal 
resentment against you, or else because the welfare of 
his government, requires the execution of his law upon 
you. There cannot be any thing like the former, you 
know. It must be the latter, if either. Now the balm 
for your wounded spirit is this, that the moral impression 
in respect to the nature and tendencies of sin, which is 
the only possible reason God can have, for leaving you 
to suffer its penalties, is accomplished far better by the 
life and death of his Son; and if you are ready to aban- 
don sin for the future, there is no reason whatever re- 
maining, why you should be punished for the past. God 
never could have wished to punish you for the sake of 
doing evil, and all the good which he could have accom- 
plished by it, is already effected in another and a better 
way. Now believe this cordially. Give it full control 
in your heart. Come to God and ask for forgiveness on 
this ground. Trust to it fully. If you do, you will feel 
that the account for the past is closed and settled for 
ever. You are free from all responsibility in regard to 
it. Ransomed by your Redeemer, the chains of doubt 
and fear and sin fall ofT, and you stand, free, and safe, 
and happy, a new creature, in Jesus Christ, — redeemed 
by his precious blood, and henceforth safe under his 
mighty protection. 

This change, bringing to a close the old responsibili- 
ties for sin, and commencing as it were, a new life in the 
Savior, that is, by an intimate union of spirit with him, 
is very clearly described in many passages of scripture 
like the following; which, however, you have perhaps 
often read without understanding it. " I am crucified 



Ch. 6.] PARDON. 173 

Faith necessary. Difference between faith and belief. The electric machine. 

with Christ; nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ 
liveth in me, and the life I now live in the flesh, I live 
by faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave 
himself for me." To receive these benefits, you must 
have faith. Faith means confidence; not merely cold, 
intellectual conviction, but confidence,— a feeling of the 
heart. To show this distinction clearly, imagine a man 
unaccustomed to such an elevation, to be taken to the 
summit of some lofty spire, and asked to step out from 
an opening there, upon a narrow board, suspended by 
ropes over the dizzy height. How will he shrink back 
instinctively, from it. Explain to him the strength of the 
ropes, show him their size, and convince him by the most 
irresistible evidence that they have abundant strength to 
support many times his weight. Can you make him 
willing to trust himself to them ? No. But the builder, 
whose confidence in the suspended scaffolding has been 
established by experience, stands upon it without fear, 
and looks down to the stony pavement a hundred feet 
below, with an unmoved and steady eye. Now you must 
have such faith in Christ's sufferings and death, as not 
merely to admit their efficacy, but to trust yourself to it. 

A father was once amusing a number of children with 
an electric machine, and after one or two had touched 
the knob and received the shock, they drew back from 
the apparatus, and looked upon it with evident dread. 
The father presently held out to them the jar, uncharged, 
and consequently harmless, and said distinctly, but with- 
out emphasis, " If you touch it now, you will feel noth- ' 
ing. Who will try? " 

The children drew back with their hands behind them, 

" You do not believe me," said he. 

"Yes sir," said they, with one voice; and several 

hands were held out to prove their fa*th; but they were 

quickly withdrawn, before reaching the dangerous knob. 

One alone, a timid little girl, had that kind of confidence 

15* 



174 THE CORNER-STONE [Oh. 6. 

Christian faith. Doubts and fears. The way to find peace. 

in her father which led her really to trust to him. The 
rest believed his word, but had not heartfelt faith in it. 
Even the little believer's faith was not unwavering. 
You could see on her face, when the little knuckle ap- 
proached the harmless brass ball, a slight expression of 
anxiety, showing that she had some doubts and fears 
after all; and there was an evident feeling of relief, 
when she touohed the knob, and found, from actual trial, 
that her father's word was true, and that there was really 
nothing there. 

This last is christian faith exactly. It not only believes 
what the Savior says, but it acts in reliance upon it. 
It trusts to Christ, and throws itself upon him, and tries 
to hush its remaining fears, and to feel fully the confi- 
dence which it knows is deserved. Still there will be 
too often a slight misgiving — a hesitating fear, alter- 
nating and mingling with its confidence and love, — and 
expressing itself in the prayer, " Lord, I believe, help 
thou mine unbelief." There ought not to be, however, 
the slightest misgiving. It is sinful and unreasonable, 
even in the least possible degree. 

Come at once then to the cross of Christ with faith in 
it. Real heartfelt confidence in its efficacy in taking 
away all the necessity for punishment, if you are only 
ready now to abandon sin. If you do this, you may be 
sure that peace and happiness will come. 

This will give you peace, but nothing else will. So 
deeply in the human heart has God laid the feeling, that 
sin must bring suffering in its train, that you cannot get 
rid of the burden of responsibility for the past, but in this 
way. You may forget it for a time, you may drown it 
by the excitements of business, or of pleasure, but the 
poison will remain, rankling more and more, and the 
more clearly you see your sins, and the more deep your 
repentance, the more distinctly will you feel that repent- 
ance alone, can never authorize their remission We 



Oh. 6.] PARDON. 175 

Justified by the law. Lasting effects of sin. Example. 

cannot be justified by any deeds of the law ; that is, we 
cannot be pardoned, — considered just, — by any thing 
we can do in obedience to the law. We must be justi- 
fied by faith, — if we are to enjoy real peace with God, it 
must be through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who gave him- 
self for us, that we might be reconciled to God through 
the propitiation he has made for our sins. 

When a person first commences his course as a moral 
agent, he then, indeed, has before him obedience or dis- 
obedience, and if he obeys, he is then justified by the laiv. 
The phrase is almost a technical one, but the meaning is 
obvious. He keeps the law, and on account of this obe- 
dience he stands innocent and safe. He is safe from all 
charges of guilt, from all the consequences of guilt. He 
enjoys peace of mind, and a quiet conscience, which re- 
sult, from his own moral excellence, his strict obedience 
to the law. He is justified by works, and can have no 
place for repentance, and no need of a Savior. 

If, however, he has once committed sin, his character 
and standing are for ever changed. He is, and must be, 
henceforward on a different footing. Common sense 
tells us this; — for suppose, among the spotless angels 
around God's throne, there was one who, millions of 
years ago, on one single occasion, fell into a passion, or 
yielded his heart to the dominion of any other sin. Sup- 
pose that he was brought immediately to repentance, 
and returned to duty, and never afterwards transgressed, 
and that God forgave him his sin, how evident it is, that 
the moral attitude in which he stands must thenceforth 
be different from that of all the others. How differently 
would he be looked upon! How differently must he for 
ever feel! The recollection would follow him, and some- 
thing like a sense of responsibility would follow him, — 
a burden which no lapse of time, and no subsequent 
obedience could remove. 

It would be so, too, under any other government. 



176 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 6. 

The sinning child. Change in his moral position. Justification. 

Even where the sin is entirely forgiven, it places the sin- 
ner on permanently different ground. Among a family 
of affectionate children, suppose that one should, on a 
single occasion, rebel against his father, and introduce 
for one day, derangement and suffering into the usually 
happy circle. The father takes such measures as to 
bring him back immediately to repentance and submis- 
sion, and he is forgiven; freely and fully forgiven, — and 
yet how plain it is that the next morning, when the 
family are about to separate from the breakfast table, to 
engage in the various duties of the day, that this return- 
ing and forgiven sinner, stands in a moral attitude en- 
tirely different from the rest. He feels differently; his 
brothers feel towards him differently; his father looks 
upon him with new and altered thoughts. The evil con- 
sequences of his sin are perhaps all over, — for his father 
may have remedied them all. The guilt of it is all 
gone, — for if he is really penitent, he is renewed and 
strengthened in his feeling of affectionate submission to 
his father. But something remains. It is not resent- 
ment against him; — his father and his brothers love him 
even more than before. It is not suspicion; — they feel 
increased confidence in him, knowing that the bitter 
lesson that he has learned, will save him from wan- 
dering again. It is not alienation of any kind, — their 
hearts are bound more closely to him than ever, and you 
will see that there is a tone of greater kindness, and a 
look of greater affection, from father and mother, to this 
their returning son, than if he had not sinned and been 
forgiven. What is it, then, that remains? It is hard to 
describe it, but the heart testifies that there is something 
which places him in a new position, and gives to the 
affection of which he is an object, a peculiar character. 
He is justified; that is, there no longer rests upon him 
the responsibilities of guilt, — but he is not justified 
by his obedience, — by the deeds of the law. He has 



Ch. 6.] * PARDON. 177 

Peace of conscious rectitude. Peace of forgiveness. 

violated law, and wandered from duty, and yet he is 
justified and loveu again. 

Sin therefore, even if it is sincerely repented of and 
entirely forgiven, places the soul which has committed 
it, in a new and peculiar attitude. If peace returns, it 
is not the peace of conscious rectitude; it is the peace 
of forgiveness, — of reconciliation; — as perfect as the 
other, but of a different kind. This distinction is clear. 
Every one who looks into his own heart will see it. The 
two kinds of justification and of peace are brought to view 
continually in the New Testament, where almost every 
form of contrast and antithesis is employed to set one over 
.against the other, in order to give point and prominence 
to the distinction. It is of immense importance, that the 
young Christian should consider this, so that he may 
clearly understand which kind of peace and happiness he 
is to seek. 

Forgiveness; the proud, unsubdued, and restless spirit 
of the world knows not what it means; but he who has 
experienced the enjoyment which springs from it, feels 
that it is the richest and deepest fountain of human hap- 
piness. The heart renewed, — sin throwing down its 
weapons and escaping from the temple which it has made 
wretched so long, — God reconciled, — the soul over- 
flowing with the emotions of gratitude and love, to which 
the contrast of past indifference and enmity gives a 
character of warmth and vividness, which they can 
never know who have never sinned, — the past, gloomy 
and dark as it is, all forgiven, — the future, bright and 
alluring with promised enjoyments, which are prized the 
more as the free unmerited gifts of infinite love, — these 
are some of the feelings which mingle in the heart which 
is reconciled to God. Others lie too deep for descrip- 
tion; they must be experienced to be known; but they 
who know them will testify, that in the sense of penitence 
and pardon, where it has full possession of the soul, there 



178 THE C0RNER-ST0XE. [Ch. 6. 

Joys of forgiveness. The sting of sin. Their permanence. 

are fountains of as pure and deep enjoyment as the heart 
can contain. The soul rests in it. bathes itself in it, 
as it were, with contented and peaceful delight. Other 
enjoyments are restless and unsatisfying. This fills the 
soul, and leaves it nothing to wish for but to be undis- 
turbed. If is hardly proper for us to inquire why sin was 
permitted to enter the government of God; but this we 
can see, that it has opened a fountain of enjoyment en- 
tirely unknown before. It has brought happiness which, 
without it, could not have been felt, upon the earth, and 
it has even introduced a new song into heaven. 

But this is a digression from our path. We were en- 
deavoring to show that sin necessarily places the soul 
which has fallen a prey to it, in a new position. Even 
where it is forgiven, the moral attitude in which the 
sinner stands is permanently changed. This is, however, 
not the consideration with which we are here chiefly 
concerned. We wish rather to show the change it 
produces in the relation which the soul sustains to its 
Maker, before it is forgiven. Let us return then to our 
supposition, and imagine that the father, in the case of 
his disobedient son, had not taken such measures as to 
render it safe Tor the boy to be forgiven. There will 
then remain upon the guilty mind, a burden, which can- 
not be taken off, though other objects and interests may 
come in and, in time, hide it from his view. It is thus 
perhaps gradually forgotten, but it is not removed. It 
remains like a fragment of a weapon in a wound, per- 
haps seldom noticed or felt; but it is there, and when 
memory brings it back to view, it sends a pang of re- 
morse to the inmost soul. Many persons carry such sins 
upon their consciences all through life. Some transgres- 
sion was committed in early youth, which has been a 
thousand times forgotten, and a thousand times called 
back by memory to view, and every time it comes, the 



Ch. 6.] PARDON. 179 

A wounded spirit. The way to find peace. The Savior. 

heart sinks, and the spirit writhes, under the rankling of 
the wound. 

Such is sin. It is a barbed and poisoned arrow, which 
if once allowed to enter, will penetrate deeper and deep- 
er, and will remain, unless removed by a moral treat- 
ment adapted to the moral constitution of man; and the 
wound cannot be healed till the sin is taken away. You 
may cover it up; you may forget it, you may, like a 
man with a wounded side, take care to keep the tender 
part from the slightest touch which may disturb its quiet, 
— but the wound is still there, and it cannot be healed, 
till the sting which was left in it, is taken away. 

Now this, my reader, is your case. Sin has reigned 
in j^our heart, and consequently the peace and satisfac 
tion of perfect obedience are gone for ever; and such is 
the moral constitution of the soul, that there is no peace 
left for you, but that of forgiveness and reconciliation. 
This cannot come through mere repentance, — or con- 
fession, — or reform. It cannot come by these means, in 
any case of sin or crime whatever. A thief who should 
be pardoned by government, and become truly- penitent, 
jtnd firmly re-established in the principles of integrity, 
would not, and could not through these alone, be restored 
to happiness, even as a citizen. The memory of the 
past would be bitterness and gall, and though he might 
gradually forget his wound, he could never by such 
remedies be made whole; if he had nothing else to save 
him, he would carry the galling and heavy burden to 
his grave. And you, if you are to find real peace, real 
deliverance from the burdens of sin, must find it in clear 
views of a Savior crucified for you, and in coming to 
him with faith — i. e. cordial, unhesitating confidence, 
that he is able and willing to save to the uttermost ail 
who come unto God through him. You must feel that, 
by his life and sufferings and death, he has accomplished 
all which would have been effected bv the punishment 






180 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 6. 

Peace and pardon. Penitence essential to pardon. Peace deferred. 

due to your sins, and that henceforth you may go free, 
safe and happy in him, the past remitted for ever, — and 
the path of holiness and peace now opened broadly before 
you, and inviting you on. 

We must make a clear distinction, however, between 
peace and pardon. Cases are constantly occurring, 
where a person who, from peculiar circumstances, has 
obscure or clouded views of the nature of forgiveness, 
and the necessity of a Savior, is still really penitent for 
sin. If penitent, he will be forgiven, in fact he is for- 
given, though it may be, as it very often is, weeks and 
months, and even years, before he sees so clearly the 
nature of redemption through the Son of God, as to have 
peace and happiness restored to his heart. The great 
point is, to induce sinners to return to God, and to give 
their hearts to him. If they do it right, they will be 
humble, and watchful, and prayerful, and God will guide 
them to all truth; but there are many instances where 
peace to the troubled spirit is long delayed. The little 
child may begin to love its Maker, before it knows any 
thing about the way of safe forgiveness: so may a half- 
instructed pagan: so did in fact the Savior's disciples; 
they thought their master was to have redeemed his 
country by political power, until they actually saw him 
crucified; and even in christian countries, a soul maybe 
often so shut away from the light and influences of the 
gospel in their purity and power, as to feel after a Sav- 
ior a long time, in vain. Moral renewal is the essential 
thing for pardon. A knowledge of the salvation by 
Jesus Christ, and clear ideas of the great sacrifice for 
sin, give peace. St. Paul, the ablest, the most powerful 
and thorough-going preacher of the cross, that ever lived, 
understood this, when, standing before the august as- 
sembly at Athens, he preached simple repentance, and 
a judgment to come. Nay, we have higher authority 
still, for Jehovah himself sent priests and prophets, for 



Ch. 6.] 


PARDON. 


181 


John Bunyan's riew. 




Christian at the Cross. 



four thousand years, simply to call upon his people to 
repent of sin and do their duty ; they made but a very 
few obscure allusions to a Savior, — so obscure that they 
were not understood till that Savior came. 

John Bunyan has beautifully exhibited this view, by 
making Christian carry his burden long after he has 
entered the narrow way. His face was turned towards 
Zion, and though he fell into many sins, and encoun- 
tered many difficulties, his heart was changed. He felt 
the burden of sin, and sought relief from a friend whom 
he found on the way. But the friend replies, " Be con- 
tent to bear it, till thou comest to the place of deliver- 
ance, for there it will fall from thy back of itself." 

This burden, now, was not the burden of existing sin, 
but of responsibility for past sin. If it had been the 
former, the guide would have given him very sad advice. 
No, it was not the present pollution of sin, but its past 
responsibilities which became so heavy a burden, and 
though his heart was renewed, and he was in the right 
way, it was some time before he came so near to the cross 
of Christ, as to understand and feel its power in relieving 
his conscience of its load. He went on afterwards with 
light and happy steps 

The great question then, with every religious inquirer 
is, whether you have found penitence, not whether you 
have found peace. Do you relinquish sin? Are you 
weary of it, and do you loathe and abhor it, on its own 
account, as an evil and bitter thing, from which you can 
sincerely pray to be freed. There is a burden resting 
upon you, which still destroys your rest, and while your 
heart has really returned to God, and you can find no 
happiness but in him, you wonder that you continue 
wounded and miserable, instead of finding the relief at 
once, which you hoped penitence would bring. You con- 
clude, therefore, that you are not penitent, though you 
a^e almost conscious that you are so ; and you sink, over- 
16 



182 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 6. 

The way to remove the burden. Come to the Savior. 

whelmed with the difficulties of understanding the move- 
ments and the condition of your own heart. You feel a 
burden, and think it must be the burden of guilt. 

If your heart is really in the condition I have describ- 
ed, it is the burden of responsibility for past sins, which 
hangs over you and bows you down, though your heart 
is really renewed, and consequently you are freed, in 
some degree, from its present power. The remedy is 
the cross of Christ. Come to it, and see what he has 
done and suffered for you. Look at the moral effect of 
this great sacrifice, and feel that it takes off all the ne- 
cessity of punishment, and all the burden of your guilt 
Come and trust to this. Seek union with Christ, so 
as to be one with him, and open your heart to the full 
admission of his assurance, that you may, through this 
union, have ah past responsibilties ended for ever, and 
that all the blessings which his unfailing obedience and 
spotless perfection have deserved, may flow in upon you. 
But oh, remember, if you do thus come and give your- 
self to your Savior, going free from the bitter fruits of 
sin, through his sufferings, and expecting to enter your 
home in heaven, under his protection, and in his name, — 
remember that giving yourself up to him, must not be 
an empty form. Christ gave himself for us, not to have 
us go on in sin, after receiving its forgiveness, but to 
redeem us from all iniquity, and to purify unto himself, a 
peculiar people. If you hope for pardon in this way, 
you must give up the world and sin entirely, and for ever. 
Henceforth, its allurements and temptations must be 
nothing to you. You must say, in language, which, like 
a great many other passages, on every page of the New 
Testament, is dark to those who have not experienced 
its meaning. cc I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless 
I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life 
which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the 
Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." 



Ch. 7.j 


THE LAST SUPPER. 183 


Plan of this work. 


Analysis of preceding chapters. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE LAST SUPPER. 
" I have desired to eat this passover with you, before I suffer." 

The plan which has been followed in the progress of 
this work, may not have been very obvious to the reader. 
It was our design to present the great elementary truths 
of the religion of the gospel, as they naturally connect 
themselves with the circumstances of our Savior's his- 
tory. We accordingly commenced with his childhood, 
and were led at once, into a train of reflection on the 
nature and the character of that eternal and invisible 
essence, whose attributes were personified in him. His 
conduct and character as a man, came next before us; 
then the views of religious duty which he came to urge 
upon men. The rejection of his message by mankind, 
the consequences of it, and the way by which these con- 
sequences may, in any case, be prevented, naturally 
followed, leading us a little away from the immediate 
history of our Savior. We now return to it, — ready, 
however, to be led away again, whenever necessary to 
accomplish the great design of this volume. 

We have already shown that the great object which 
the Savior had in view, in the influence he endeavored 
to exert over men, was to induce them to repent of sin, 
and to return to duty; and not to make them theoretically 
acquainted with theological truth. He pressed moral 
obligation, and endeavored to arouse and to enlighten 
conscience. He did indeed assure them of forgiveness, 
if they would abandon sin, but he left them in a great 
measure, to be taught, by future revelation, which was 
to be made by his Spirit to the apostles, in what way that 



184 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 7. 

The la6t supper. Jerusalem. Supposed feelings of the populace. 

promised forgiveness was to be obtained. It was not 
until after his resurrection that he discoursed freely and 
plainly, even with his disciples, on this subject. Then, 
indeed, he explained the subject to them fully. He 
showed them that " he ought," that is, that it was ne- 
cessary for him "to have suffered these things, and to 
enter into his glory; and beginning at Moses and all the 
prophets, he expounded unto them, in all the Scriptures, 
the things concerning himself." 

This full disclosure of the nature and objects of hi3 
mission was not made until after his death. He ap- 
proached, however, to such a disclosure, in his last sad 
interview with his disciples, on the night in which he 
was betrayed. It is to the circumstances and character 
of this interview, that we have to call the attention of our 
readers in this chapter. 

Jerusalem was crowded with strangers, so much sv 
that, though the enmity against the Savior had been 
gathering strength, until it was now ready to burst all 
barriers, the leaders did not dare to proceed openly 
against him, for fear of a riot among these multitudes, 
which they should not be able to control. They feared 
the people, it. is said,- — for the people loved to listen 
to him, and therefore would probably defend him. They 
greatly misunderstood the human heart. He deserved to 
be beloved, and they thought that he would be; but the 
very populace whom they so much feared, instead of 
feeling any disposition to protect their innocent victim, 
joined the cry against him. Far from giving them any 
embarrassment or restraint, their clamor was the very 
means of urging the Roman Governor to do what his 
own sense of justice most plainly condemned. 

At any rate, the enemies of the Savior thought it wise 
to proceed with caution, and they were, at this time, 
laying plots for his life We shall consider the nature 



Ch. 7.] THE LAST SUPPER. 185 

The last passover. Moral greatness of the occasion, 

of the plan they formed in the next chapter. It is suffi- 
cient here to say, that Jesus knew the whole, and felt 
that his last hour had nearly come. He had been ac- 
customed for some time, to speak in public during the 
day, and at night to go out to rest in the neighboring 
villages, or to seek retirement and prayer upon the 
Mount of Olives. His last night had now come. His 
last public address to men had been delivered. The sun 
had set, for the last time, to him, and nothing now re- 
mained but to give his beloved disciples his farewell 
charge, and then once more to take his midnight walk, 
and offer his midnight prayer. 

It was evening; the evening of a great festive celebra- 
tion, which for fourteen hundred years had been unin- 
terruptedly observed. Established to commemorate one 
deliverance, and to typify another very singularly anal- 
ogous to it, it was intended to continue till the Lamb of 
God should at. length be slain. A new and nobler ordin- 
ance was then to take its place; — an ordinance of deep- 
er meaning, and higher value, and of interest, not to one 
small province only, but destined to extend its influence 
to every nation on the globe. This night therefore, 
strictly speaking, was to be celebrated the last passover. 
The thousands who crowded the city did not know it; 
but Jesus did, and, as he made preparations for celebrat- 
ing it, with his friends, noiselessly and quietly, in their 
upper chamber, he must have been impressed with the 
moral greatness of the occasion A friendless man, per- 
secuted and defenceless, and doomed to be executed, 
the next day, as a malefactor, — coming, with his twelve 
friends, as powerless and unprotected as himself, into 
their secluded room, there to bring to a close the long 
series of splendid celebrations which, for fourteen cen- 
turies, had been sustained by God's command. Yes : 
the meeting on that night, was the connecting link be- 
tween the old dispensation and the new. The Savior 

ie* 



186 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 7 

The meeting. Anxiety and sadness. 

must have known it. Friendless and persecuted, as he 
was, — the whole city thronged with his enemies, — the 
plot for his destruction matured, and spies out for him, 
— the very price for his life actually paid, and danger 
pressing around him so closely that he was obliged to 
make his arrangements very privately, in order to'be 
sure of an uninterrupted hour, — he yet must have known 
that he was bringing the long series of Jewish rites and 
ceremonies to its termination, and introducing a new 
dispensation, whose ordinances, of nobler meaning, be- 
ginning there, were to spread to every nation, and to last 
through all time. It is strange that the place chosen for 
this, too, should be the very heart and centre of hostility 
to his cause. 

At the appointed hour, they came together, and as 
they assembled around the table, their Master felt that 
he met them for the last time. They felt it too. He 
told them plainly that his hour had come, and they felt 
depressed and dejected, looking forward as they did, 
with anxiety and terror, to the scenes which were to 
ensue. They knew what they were very imperfectly, 
but Jesus himself saw the whole. They were in the 
dark, or at least they saw but dimly, but it was all broad 
light to him. As he looked around he could call to mind 
what each one would do. There was Judas, with the 
price of his blood already paid, — there was Peter, who 
was to abandon and deny him, — and not one of all these 
his firmest friends, but would forsake him in the hour of 
danger, and fly. But he did not think of these things. 
It wis the last time he was to be with them, before his 
death, and while he was fully aware that their fortitude 
could not stand the dreadful trial to which it was soon to 
be exposed, he did not dwell upon such thoughts. He 
looked upon them 'with interest and sympathy, not with 
anger, — ■ and tried to comfort, not to reprove them. He 
once became agitated in speaking of his betrayal, but 



Ch. 7.] THE LAST SUPPER. 187 

The Savior's religious instruction. He pressed duty first. Nicodemus. 

composure soon returned, and he did not allude to his 
abandonment by the rest, except in reply to their own 
boastings of unshrinking fidelity. 

But we must come to the discourse. The peculiar 
circumstances under which this meeting was held, dis- 
tinguish it from every other occasion on which the Sav- 
ior gave religious instruction. In fact we may almost 
say it was the first and only occasion on which he gave 
what may be strictly called religious instruction. He 
had pressed duty, in a thousand forms, before; — here he 
exhibited truth. He had, on every occasion, in the house 
and by the way, — in the thronged city, and before the 
multitudes assembled in the fields and on the sea-shore, 
urged men to repent and forsake their sins, — now he 
was to exhibit some great truths more clearly than he 
had ever done before, to this select company, whose 
hearts had long been preparing to receive them. In the 
path along which he led the human mind, repentance 
came first, and theology afterwards; and it would be 
well if cavilling inquirers, at the present day, would 
follow his example. They should begin by obeying the 
sermon on the Mount, and then come and listen to the 
conversation at the last supper. 

There is something most highly interesting and in- 
structive in the manner in which the Savior adapted his 
communications to the occasions on which they were to 
be made, and to the purposes which he endeavored to 
effect by them. A modern preacher would have carried 
the metaphysics of theology all over the villages of Gali- 
lee, and would have puzzled the woman of Samaria, or 
the inquiring ruler, with questions about the nature of the 
Godhead, or the distinction between moral and natural 
inability. But Jesus Christ pressed simple duty. His 
explanations all went to throw light on the one single 
distinction, between right and wrong. Even when 
JVicodemus came to him, the man better qualified, per- 



188 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 7. 

Theories of regeneration. The occasion. Topics now brought forward. 

haps, than any other one who visited him, for theological 
discussion, he simply urged upon him the necessity of 
the great change of heart; he attempted no explanation 
of the precise mode by which the heavenly influence 
could effect it. He pressed the fact, but declined all 
investigation of the theory. He in fact pronounced the 
subject beyond the grasp of our present powers, yet 
human pride and self conceit have clambered over the 
barrier which he thus attempted to raise; and confused, 
and contradictory, and unintelligible speculations, agree- 
ing in nothing but hostility to one another, — killing the 
spirit of piety and destroying the peace of the church, 
have been continually appearing, from that day to this, 
— a standing and perpetual commentary on the Savior's 
words, and a most powerful, though most melancholy 
proof of the wisdom which dictated them. 

But to return to the subject of our Savior's instruc- 
tions. These instructions, when addressed to the public 
at large, related to duty, — direct, practical, immediate 
duty, — and he seemed to love to bring it to view in ways 
so clear, and in cases so plain, that no proof but the tes- 
timony of conscience within every man's bosom, should 
be necessary to establish his positions. ".If any man 
will do his will he shall know of the doctrine," was his 
motto, and he acted according to it. The time, however, 
for instruction had now come, — instruction in the higher 
truths of religion, — the nature of the Deity, the relation 
sustained to him by Jesus Christ, the design and fruits 
of true religion, remission of past sins through the Re- 
deemer's blood, and the presence and influences of the 
Holy Spirit as the means of leading men to repentance. 
These were topics on which the Savior had seldom 
spoken didactically before, but now the last opportunity 
had come, and he opened before those who were to be 
the future ministers of his religion, new treasures of re- 
ligious knowledge. He had been the preacher before, 



Ch. 7.] THE LAST SUPPER. 189 

Free conversation. Truths adduced. His testimony respecting himself. 

— he became the religious teacher now, — arid under the 
guidance of the beloved disciple, who has recorded the 
conversation, let us go in to the still, solemn assembly, 
and hear what he has to say. 

It was a familiar conference, rather than a formal dis- 
course. The disciples freely asked questions, and some- 
times the conversation ceased to be general, and the 
individuals of the company talked with one another, in 
separate groups as they happened to be seated together. 
The great truths of religion were, however, the subjects 
of discussion, and nothing could afford higher proof of 
the genuineness and truth of the description of this in- 
terview, than the cautious, hesitating manner in which 
the leading disciples are represented as asking their 
questions; it was in precisely the way, in which new 
and extraordinary developements of truth are always 
received by pupils, from a teacher to whom they look up 
with veneration and respect. But let us look at these 
truths in detail. 

1. He explained to them that he was the great mani- 
festation of the Divinity to men; and that consequently 
it was only through him, that the human mind could find 
its access to the Divinity. But let us quote his words. 

I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no man 
cometh unto the Father but by me. 

If ye had known me, ye should have known my Fath- 
er also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have 
seen him. 

Philip saith unto him, Lord, show us the Father, and 
it sufficeth us. 

Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with 
you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that 
hath seen me, hath seen the Father; and how sayest 
thou then, Show us the Father? 

Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the 



190 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 7. 

Philip's question. The way to approach the Deity. Moral dependence. 

Father in me? the words that I speak unto you, I speak 
not of myself; but the Father, that dvvelleth in me, he 
doeth the works. 

Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in 
me: or else believe me for the very works' sake.* 

The human mind still repeats Philip's very natural 
request. " Show us the Fatner." It reaches forward 
for some vision of the divinity, — the great unseen and 
inconceivable essence, which pervades all space, and 
exists through all time; and it often decks out for itself, 
as we have shown in a preceding chapter, a gorgeous 
image, with crown and sceptre and throne, which reason 
tells them cannot exist, and which if it did exist, would 
be a splendid idol, not God. How many Christians bow 
to such an image, which their imagination has made; — 
an idol more vain, in fact, than those of stocks and stones, 
— for they at least, have substance, while this is but a 
phantom of the mind. No. Jesus Christ is the personi- 
fication of the Divinity, for us; the brightness of his glory 
and the express image of his person, and it is by him 
alone that we are to find our way to the great power 
which reigns over us all. Believe this, said the Savior, 
on my assurance, or else believe it on account of the 
powers you see that I possess, and the works I do. 

2. He taught them that divine influence upon the 
hearts of men was essential to their repentance and sal- 
vation. " Ye have not chosen me," said he, — " I have 
chosen you." What a declaration! How solitary it 
makes the Savior in the world he had come to redeem. 
More than thirty years he had spent here, doing good 
continually, and proclaiming offers of reconciliation and 
pardon, and now, on the last night of his life, surrounded 
by inveterate foes, already actually sold to them, and with 
but a few hours of liberty remaining, — he gathers pri- 
*John 14: 6 — 11. 



Ch. 7.] 




THE 


LAST 


SUPPER. 


191 


Ye have not. chosen 


me. 






The 


vine and the branches. 



vately his twelve friends, that he may have one last sad 
interview with them; and here he had to reflect that even 
these his twelve friends, among ten thousand enemies, 
had not chosen him; — he had chosen them. He stood 
alone, after all; the only example of independent, origi- 
nal holiness. The universal reign of ungodliness and 
sin, had been broken only where he had chosen individ- 
uals to be saved, and trained them, by his own power, to 
moral fruitfulness and beauty. 

" Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.* 9 
How much it means! How many lessons we may, by a 
most direct and rigid inference, draw from it! How lofty 
the moral courage which led him to say it! Another 
man, in such a case, would have strengthened the attach 
ment of the few who remained true to him, at such an 
hour, by praising their generous fidelity in adhering to 
their chosen friend. But Jesus, as if loving the solitary 
grandeur of the position in which he stood, with all the 
world against him except these twelve, gently withdraws 

himself even from these, ■" Ye have not chosen me, 

but I have chosen you, -One of you will betray me, 

another will repeatedly deny that he is my friend, 

and in the course of this night, when the hour of real 
danger shall come, every one of you will be scattered, 
and will leave me alone." Solitary sufferer! how wide 
a distance separated thy lofty powers, and original and 
stable virtue, from the weak and frail and cultivated 
attachment of thy trembling friends! 

The Savior brought to view, in many other forms, the 
dependence of his disciples, for all the moral excellence 
they could ever possess, upon their union with him. 
"I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman." 
" Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh 
away; and every branch that bearem fruit he purgeth, 
that it may bear move fruit " 



192 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 7. 

Union with Christ. The Comforter. His work upon human hearts. 

" Now ye are clean through the word which I have 
spoken unto you." 

" Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot 
bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can 
ye except ye abide in ine." 

It was as if he had said, You have no spiritual life 
originating in yourselves, and existing independently. 
You depend on me. It is by divine power exercised 
upon you, by means of your union with me, that your 
kearts are to be purified more and more, so that the 
fruits of piety may be increased in you. Without this 
union you will be nothing. 

He spoke to them of the Comforter also, alluding 
again and again to this promised influence from above; 
saying first that he would send him from the Father, and 
again that the Father would send him in his, the Savior's, 
name. This Comforter, the Holy Spirit, was to enlight- 
en their minds, and comfort their hearts, and, above all, 
was to bring effectually to the hearts and consciences 
of men, those great truths which the Savior had preach- 
ed to the ear in vain. The three great subjects which 
this Spirit was to press upon the attention of mankind 
were pointed out. Human guilt, human duty, and a 
judgment to come. " He shall reprove the world of sin 
and of righteousness;" of righteousness and of sin, some 
theologians would say, reversing the order, — thinking 
that in a logical arrangement, right should come before 
wrong. But no; the Savior's view is far more true to 
nature and to fact. The Holy Spirit when it comes to 
men, finds thern debased and depraved, and righteous- 
ness, if it finds a place in human hearts at all, must be 
preceded, by conviction of sin. To produce this convic- 
tion, and then to awaken penitence and love, and to keep 
alive a sense of obligation and accountability, is the work 
which this heavenly visiter comes to do. 

The necessity of an interposition from Heaven to turn 



Ch. 7.] 


THE LAST SUPPER. 


193 


The disciple's question. 


The prayer. 


Eternal life a gift. 



men away from their sins, and to bring them to repent- 
ance, had been often alluded to by our Savior before. 
But the truth stands out, with uncommon clearness and 
prominence, in these his last instructions. His pupils 
did not at once fully understand it. Nay, who, we may- 
ask, understands it now? 

" He that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and 
I will love him and manifest myself to him." 

"How," asked one of the disciples, "how is it that 
thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the 
world ? " 

" If a man love me," was the reply, "he will keep 
my words, and my Father will love him, and we will 
come unto him and make our abode with him." 

It is no wonder that, with their imperfect ideas of the 
true character of their master, and of the relation he sus- 
tained to the Divinity, they asked the question, how he 
could manifest himself to them and not to the world; — 
and how strange must his reply have sounded, if they 
supposed it came from a man like themselves. God and 
I will come and dwell with the good! What language, 
— if a mere mortal man had uttered it. 

It is most interesting to observe how, in this whole 
conversation, the thoughts of the Savior seemed con- 
stantly to dwell on this great truth, — the moral depen- 
dence of the human heart on God. It came up in 
various forms, again and again, as if it was a truth which 
his mind dwelt upon, and continually recurred to with 
pleasure. Even in his prayer, it is most strongly ex- 
pressed, and almost in the first words he uttered. "As 
thou hast given him power over all flesh — " what sort of 
power? we ask: — the answer follows; — " that he should 
give eternal life, to as many as thou hast given him." 
And what is meant here by eternal life? holiness itself, 
or the reward of holiness? "And this is eternal life,** 
.he Savior proceeds, " that they might know thee, the only 
17 



194 




THE 


CORNER- 


•STONE. 




[ 


CI 


i. 7. 


God's 


claim 


often resisted. 




The happiness 


of 


yieldi 


ng 


to it. 



true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast senf." The 
knowledge of God, and of Jesus Christ his Son, is a gift 
from the Deity to men; and it is Jesus Christ himself 
who bestows it. 

The heart which is still unsubdued, is restless and dis- 
(satisfied, under the claim which God thus asserts to all 
the praise which human holiness deserves. But the soul 
which is realty penitent and humble, finds its greatest 
happiness in feeling and acknowledging it. Religion is 
submission to God; and the feeling of submission and the 
sense of dependence, are called for more imperiously in 
reference to our moral and spiritual wants than to any 
other. There is in fact no moral or spiritual safety with- 
out these feelings, and our Savior knew this full well. 
There is scarcely any subject which he brought more 
continually to view. On this occasion he expressed the 
sentiment again and again, in various forms, or rather 
expressions seemed spontaneously to flow from his lips, 
recognising the truth as if it was one which he dwelt 
upon with pleasure. 

The feeling which prompted this, is one which every 
true Christian can understand. The highest emotion of 
enjoyment which the renewed heart can feel, is perhaps 
this sense of entire, unqualified, unconditional submis- 
sion to God. The word submission does not however 
precisely express the feeling. It is the sense of being 
entirely, and altogether in God's hands, and at God's 
disposal, — in every respect, — for life, health, prosperity, 
character, heart, everything. It is when this feeling 
has most complete and unbroken ascendency in the 
mind, that the soul attains its highest position, and 
enjoys its purest happiness. Theoretical reasoning on 
the subject might lead us to suppose that such a feeling 
would diminish the sense of responsibility, and throw the 
soul off its guard, and leave it exposed to temptation, by 
its trusting thus its moral keeping to another. But no- 



Ch. 7.] THE LAST SUPPER. 195 

Feeling of dependence safe: happy. Religious experience. 

it is not so in fact. The heart which lies most submis- 
sive in its Maker's hands, and trusts most entirely to his 
protection, is the one which is most alive to the guilt and 
dangers of sin, and most sensitive and shrinking in res- 
pect to the slightest contamination. The higher are 
its ideas of its own moral helplessness, the firmer is the 
ground on which it stands. When it is weak, then it is 
strong. Christian philosophy has been sadly perplexed 
to explain the theory of moral agency, and the nature 
of the divine control over human hearts, but Christian 
experience settles all questions about the fact; and the 
penitent and humbled soul, which will leave the whole 
field of worldly influences and the speculations of human 
science, and go on, alone, after God, will, in the depths 
of its own experience, be led to views of the extent of 
this control, which can never be forced by argument 
upon those who have not acquired them by their own 
spiritual vision. The temple of religious experience has 
all its magnificence and all its grandeur within; and they 
who have found their way into the inner apartments, and 
have actually gazed upon the solemn splendor that is 
there, can understand and sympathize with one another; 
while tliey who stand without can never be convinced, 
by argument, or description, of what they cannot see. 
Jesus Christ did not attempt to do this; He adapted his 
discourse to the degree of progress which they who 
heard it had made. He did not stand arguing without, 
but led his followers in, and pointed out the sublimer 
truths, and the loftier sentiments of religion, only as fast 
as they could see and feel them. 

We have seen that the feeling which seemed so to fill 
the Savior's heart on this occasion, the entire spiritual 
dependence of the human soul on God, is a safe feeling; 
it is also a most happy one. A sense of dependence, 
and confidence in promised protection, are delightful 
emotions to hearts constituted as ours are. This is true 



196 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 7. 

Trust in God. Physical danger. The safe refuge. 

in regard to physical dangers. When the dark heavy 
clouds gather in the western sky, at the close of a sultry 
summer's day, and flashes of lightning are seen, and 
heavy rolling thunder seems to convulse the sky, the 
christian father betakes himself to his sheltered home, 
and gathers his family around him, and loves to come 
and lay the whole precious trust into his Maker's hands. 
If his heart is right it will be a happy hour to him. He 
has done all he can do, and there is already over him 
whatever protection human art can raise against the rain 
and hail, and the tempestuous wind and fatal lightning, 
and all the dangers of the midnight storm; but his hap- 
piness consists in forgetting all such protection, and 
coming to place himself and all that is dear to him, 
under the mighty hand of God, confiding in him and in 
him alone. He knows he can trust to nothing else. 
There is a roof over him, but one blast of the tempest 
might scatter it to fragments. His walls a single bolt 
from heaven might rend asunder, and his whole dwelling 
in a moment burst into flame. He knows all this; and 
it is his happiness to feel that though he has done all he 
can do, he must trust in God, and in God alone. 

It is exactly so with his spiritual protection. He will 
do all he can do, but he never will consider his prayers 
and resolutions and watchfulness as his real defence 
against temptation and sin. No; he takes delight in 
feeling that, in respect to moral protection, his trust is 
wholly in God, and this feeling that he is spiritually in 
his Maker's hands, is not only his greatest safety, — it is 
his highest happiness. The soul, too, comes to this feel- 
ing in all the trying scenes, and solemn occasions of life, 
with peculiar pleasure. It flies to it as to a refuge, and 
enjoys its refreshing influence, when nothing else would 
sustain or console. Our Savior seems scarcely ever to 
have thought of it so much, and to have pressed it so 
strongly and so repeatedly upon his disciples, as in this 
^ast sad scene, 



Ch. 7.] 


THE LAST SUPPER. 


197 


Other truths. 


Evidences of piety. Fruits. 


Common errors. 



But let us proceed to consider some of the other top- 
ics he brought before them on this occasion. As we go 
on, the reader will be struck at the selection he made. 
The great fundamental truths of religion seemed to rise 
before him and occupy his view. It was in fact a dis- 
course on the theology of the gospel, bringing out its 
great features, and holding them up prominently to view. 
It has not the formal arrangement of a scholastic dis- 
course, for it was a free conversation, — but the truths 
are all there, and the nature of the views he thus pre- 
sented to the disciples, so lofty, and so profound, con- 
tributes, quite as much, perhaps, as the affecting circum- 
stances of the occasion, to give to the whole scene that 
air of majestic and affecting solemnity, which is not 
equalled by any other passage, even in the Bible. But 
let us proceed to consider the remaining topics. 

3. He taught them that the true evidences of piety 
are its fruits; a truth of which it seems harder to con- 
vince mankind than of almost any other. Nobody 
denies it in words, but very few really believe it in feet. 
We are always substituting something else in the place 
of these fruits. It seems as if the Savior felt that now, 
as he was about to leave his disciples to carry on his 
work alone, they would be peculiarly exposed to danger 
from this source, and he accordingly pressed upon them 
again and again attention to it. " By this shall all men 
know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to 
another." "If ye love me, keep my commandments." 
" He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, 
he it is that loveth me." " If a man love me he will 
keep my words." " Herein is my Father glorified, that 
ye bear much fruit, so shall ye be my disciples." Such 
expressions were continually occurring in his discourse; 
and if we consider, what was unquestionably the fact, 
that the record of John contains only a bri^f summary 
■of the remarks which the Savior made, we shall be con*- 

17* 



198 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 1 

Two errors. Abundance of talk. Insincerity. 

vinced that he urged this subject very emphatically and 
fully, upon the attention of his disciples. 

The church is, however, very slow to learn the les- 
son. We err in two ways, sometimes by placing some- 
thing else entirely, in the stead of fruits, as evidences of 
piety, and sometimes on the other hand, by mistaking the 
nature of the fruits which are to be regarded as evidence. 
We do this continually; and probably when the day of 
real trial shall come, the whole church will be overwhel- 
med with astonishment to find at last what an immense 
amount of hollow and hypocritical pretension, merely, 
will be found under her banner. In fact the evidence 
which is, perhaps, mainly relied upon here, in determin- 
ing the attitude in which a man stands, in respect to 
christian character, is almost altogether different from 
that pointed out by the Savior. Bold assurance of pro- 
fession, and religious party spirit, rank very high among 
the commonly received evidences of piety. If a man 
talks confidently of his change, and expresses deep inter- 
est in the duties of his new service, and if the language 
of the Christian comes fluently from the tongue, we are 
slow to suspect insincerity. In many such cases, the very 
profusion of professions, might lead us to withhold our 
confidence. Empty profession is generally loquacious, 
while sincere and devoted attachment, is strong and deep 
in the heart, but its words are few. " Out of the abun- 
dance of the heart the mouth speaketh," the reader will 
say. True, it speaks out of the abundance, and yet it 
says but little. There is abundance of feeling but not of 
words. 

Party spirit in religion is another spurious proof of 
piety. The victim of it seems to be entirely devoted to 
the cause of Christ; he has indeed a strong interest in 
that cause, and makes continual effort and submits to 
great sacrifices to promote it. But the real fruits of 
piety do not reign in his heart, and if he was not spirit- 



Ch. 7.] THE LAST SUPPER. 199 

Party spirit in religion. Its nature. Its spirit. Its effects. 

ually blind, he would see that his zeal is party spirit, 
almost entirely; — i. e. an interest in an organization 
of which he has become a constituent part. Whenever 
men act together, the mind, by one of its mysterious 
powers, sees a new being in the union, and soon forms 
almost a personal attachment for it. It enlists men's 
pride and ambition, and arouses all their energies; and 
devotion to this imaginary existence becomes often one 
of the strongest passions of the human mind. It is one 
of the sins to which the human heart is most prone, and 
in which it is most impregnable. A man usually thinks 
it a virtue. He sees he is not working for himself, and 
persuades himself that it is the principles of his party 
which are the object of his attachment. But this is not 
the case, for when these principles spread partially into 
other parties he is always displeased. He is never sat- 
isfied at seeing his opponents coming to the truth, — they 
must come over to his side. 

This is party spirit, and the humble and devoted 
Christian, who really loves his master, finds it constantly 
insinuating itself into his heart, and acting as the motive 
of a very large proportion of his labors in the service 
of his master. The tests by which this spirit can be 
detected, we have not time now to describe; but it burns 
everywhere in the Christian church, it influences parish 
against parish, and society against society, and makes 
each denomination jealous and suspicious of the rest. 
It frowns upon the truth and the Christian prosperity 
which is not found within its own pale. It is the spirit 
of intolerance and exclusion. "We found one," it says, 
"casting out devils in thy name, and we forbade him 
because he followeth not ms." Banish this spirit for ever. 
If men will cast out devils, no matter whom they follow; 
they must do it, if they do it at all, in Jesus's name, and 
no matter for the rest, We must not frown upon real 
piety or truth, because they do not appear in our own 



200 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 7, 

True fruits of piety. The catalogue. Love. Joy. Peace. 

uniform; but then, on the other hand, we must never con- 
found truth with error, nor admit the pretensions of any 
specious counterfeit, which may assume the name and 
form of piety, while it is v/ithout its power. 

But what are the real fruits of piety? the reader may 
ask. The apostle has given the catalogue. They are 
characteristics of the heart, not of the external conduct. 
They are these: 

Love. The heart that is renewed, experiences an 
entire change in respect to its great ruling principles 
of action. Instead of being swayed by the impulses of 
selfishness and passion, its affections go forth and rest 
upon God as their supreme object, and link themselves 
also, by indissoluble bonds, with every other being who 
is joined in heart to him. These new emotions have 
henceforth the control. 

Joy. The prevalence of universal love will go very 
far towards producing universal enjoyment. Love is 
happiness, and it brings happiness in every form; and 
true piety will find sources of pleasure which sin never 
knows. Where there is moroseness or melancholy, there 
must be something wrong. It may be moral or physical 
disease, but it must be one or the other. 

Peace. Peace within itself, and peace in respect to 
others. Selfishness is keenly alive to its own rights, 
and keenly sensitive to injuries; and where each seeks 
mainly his own, there must be collision. Piety quiets 
animosities and strifes, by destroying the value of the 
objects of contention. It points men to new sources of 
happiness; and they are such as can be enjoyed most 
perfectly, when others share them. The heart that is 
renewed, is at peace, too, within itself. Its irritating 
passions and corroding cares are all allayed, and the 
soul is like a summer's sea, serene and placid, — the 
storms of passion hushed, and the golden beams of the 
sun of righteousne;_ .2posing tranquilly upon it. 



Ch. 7.] THE LAST SUrPER. 201 

Long suffering. Gentleness. Goodness. Faith. 

Long-Suffering. The true Christian feels that he 
is himself forgiven, and he consequently bears long and 
is kind. He looks upon sin with compassion for the 
offender, and remembers the burning from which he was 
saved. The heartless pretender can, in public, assume 
this language, but when off his guard at home, or in his 
counting room, or field, his hasty words, and impatient 
looks betray the spirit which reigns in his heart. 

Gentleness. The Christian feels that his great busi- 
ness in iife is to lead hearts to the Savior: and hearts, if 
led at all, must be led gently. The hollow-hearted pre- 
tender will try to drive. Harsh, repulsive and tyranni- 
cal, he shows that he has not experienced the grace of 
God, which always softens asperities, and smooths the 
roughness with which selfishness is so often clothed. 

Goodness. The renewed heart feels a benevolent 
interest in the welfare of every sentient being. It 
desires universal happiness, and springs, with an ever 
ready elasticity, to produce it, wherever Providence 
shall present the opportunity. The great public effort, 
the generous donation, the open deed of charity, may 
be the result of pride, or ostentation, or party spirit, but 
real Christian benignity shows itself in all the thousand 
nameless occasions, where a word or a look or a trifling 
action may give pleasure. It shows itself in great efforts 
too; but the highest proof of its existence and its power, 
is continued, and universal, and spontaneous action. 

Faith. True piety believes what God says and trusts 
to it. It sees heavenly realities, and feels their influence 
continually. It trusts in God's care, realizing that every 
mercy is his gift, and bowing submissively to affliction 
and trial. Hypocrisy is sound in its theoretical views, 
but it repines at losses, — or stands restless and uneasy 
over the cradle of a sick child, — or proves by the "man- 
ner in which it pursues this world, that it has no faith in 
God's promises about the happiness of another. 



202 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 7. 

Meekness. Temperance. Other occurrences at the interview. 

Meekness. The sincere Christian is humble in re- 
spect to himself, and indulgent and mild towards others. 
Having some conceptions of the deceitful wickedness of 
his own heart, he looks upon the worst of men as brother 
sinners. The hypocrite cannot see his own pollution 
and guilt, and is consequently haughty, censorious, and 
uncharitable in respect to the failings of his fellow men. 

Temperance. The worldly enjoyments of the sincere 
disciple are in all respects, regulated by Christian prin- 
ciples. The regulator, existing in the heart, acts always, 
and with steady consistency. Hypocrisy restrains those 
indulgences which men would see and condemn, but she 
rewards herself for her venal virtue, by the freedom of 
her secret sins. 

Such are the fruits of piety, as enumerated by an 
inspired apostle. It was such fruits as these that our 
Savior had in view. He charged his disciples, again 
and again, to look for these, as the only evidences that 
human professions of love to him were really sincere. 

We have thus considered the three great truths which 
stand out most prominently in the instructions of this 
occasion. There were, however, various other topics 
discussed, and various incidents occurred, which it does 
not comport with our present purpose to describe. There 
are many considerations which it would be highly in- 
teresting to present, such as the perfect frankness with 
which he foretold the dangers and sufferings which his 
disciples were about to incur in his cause; the frequency 
and earnestness with which he pressed upon them the 
promised efficacy of prayer, sometimes saying that he, 
and sometimes that the Father would grant their re- 
quests; and the manner in which he presented to them 
the comforts and consolations of religion, as their refuge 
from their future trials. These things, however, we can- 
not dwell upon now, 



Ch. 7. J THE LAST SUPPER. 203 

The Lord's supper. The Savior's view of ceremonies. 

At the close of the interview the Savior established 
the great Christian ordinance, which has been celebra- 
ted, without interruption, in every age, from that day to 
this. The circumstances under which the ordinance 
was established, teach us a lesson, as we have already 
briefly said, in a preceding chapter, in regard to the 
manner in which our Savior regarded forms and ceremo- 
nies, which his followers have in all ages been very 
prone to forget. It is not that they overrate the impor- 
tance of external religious observances, but that they for- 
get what it is upon which their value and importance 
entirely depend, — viz. their spiritual meaning, and the 
feelings of heart with which they are performed. 

It was one great object of the Savior's preaching to 
call the attention of men from outward actions to in- 
ward character, and the manner in which he instituted 
this last solemn ceremony is precisely in keeping with 
the whole tenor of his public instructions. There is no 
formal ceremonious preparation for it; no studied ar- 
rangements and cautious prescription of mode and form; 
but when the time arrives for his last farewell, he merely 
sets apart, in the most simple manner, his last solemn 
act of intercourse with his disciples, as a perpetual me- 
morial of hij death; — and he does it too in such away as 
most effectually to fix their minds upon its moral mean- 
ing, — its spiritual effect. He did not devise any new 
ceremony for the purpose, but only paused upon a portion 
of the solemn transaction in which he was last engaged, 
and consecrated that. He did it too in language so 
brief and general as to show that moral impression, not 
ceremonial exactness, was what he had in view in look- 
ing forward to future celebrations of the ordinance, by 
his followers in ages to come. " Take these," says he, 
as he offers them the bread which had been placed 
upon the table for another purpose, and poured out 
another cup of their simple wine '' Take these, as em- 



204 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 7. 

Forms and feelings. Baptism. The Rainbow. 

blems of my sufferings and death, incurred for the re- 
mission of your sins, and henceforth do this in remem- 
brance of me. As often as you do it, you do show forth 
the Lord's death until he come." 

The Savior acted evidently upon the same principles 
in regard to the other great ceremony of the Christian 
religion. He wanted some mode by which an open 
profession of attachment to him might be made; and he 
just adopts one already in use for a similar purpose. 
He did not contrive baptism, as a mode of publicly pro- 
fessing piety, — he merely adopted it, formed already, as 
it was, to his hands. The people were accustomed to it. 
Their associations were already formed in connexion 
with it, and of course it was the most convenient mode. 
He would probably have taken any other form had any 
other been more convenient and common. The one 
chosen is indeed highly appropriate; denoting so clearly 
*he inward purification which the open professon of faith 
m Christ and attachment to his cause should always 
bring wiih it; but it is the sincerity with which it is per- 
formed, not the appropriateness of its character, which 
gives it all its value. 

Such is the origin then of the ceremonies of the Chris- 
tian faith. For a mode of admission to his church, he 
simply takes the ordinary sign of religious profession 
among the people with whom he lived, and in the selection 
of a ceremony to commemorate his sufferings and death, 
and to be, in all ages and in every land, a perpetual 
memerial of the most momentous transaction which ever 
occurred, he simply pauses a moment upon the last act 
which he performed in the presence of his friends, most 
solemnly significant, it is true, and consecrates that to the 
great purpose he had in view. It reminds us of a transac- 
tion which occurred twenty-five centuries before, when 
Jehovah, after the flood, wishing to quiet the fears which 
future clouds and storms might awaken, just takes the 



Ch. 7.] THE LAST SUPPER. 205 

Ceremonies symbolical. Monuments. A contrast. 

rainbow, the object most obvious on the occasion when it 
is wanted, as the token of his promised protection. In 
nothing more strikingly than in this, are false religions 
distinguishable from true. The former are yielding and 
flexible as to principles, but minute in the specification of 
forms, and unbending in the exaction of obedience. The 
.latter makes moral principle the rock, unmoved and im- 
movable though heaven and earth should pass away; but 
when it comes to signs and ceremonies, — almost any 
thing will do. The ordinances of the gospel are indeed 
appropriate and symbolical, but they are no more so, 
than a thousand others would have been, which, under a 
little different circumstances, it would have been quite 
as convenient to adopt. The ceremony of admission to 
the church vv^uld have had as much meaning if it had 
consisted simpiy in holding up the hands to heaven, or 
appearing in a white robe, the emblem of purity, or 
making the sign of the cross upon the forehead. 

And yet there is something in the simple act which 
Jesus Christ consecrated as a memorial of him, which 
renders it admirably adapted to it& purpose. Other 
persons have generally endeavored to perpetuate their 
memory by leaving some magnificent monument behind 
them. One of the most striking exhibitions that human 
beings make of the mysterious principles of their nature, 
is, by their desperate struggles to keep a place for their 
names upon the earth, after they have themselves gone 
beneath the ground. One founds a city; another, at a 
vast expense, erects a mausoleum, and a third stamps 
his effigy upon a medal or a coin. But Jesus Christ 
understood human nature better. He used no marble, 
or brass, or iron, — he laid no deep foundations, and 
reared no lofty columns. When he bade the world 
farewell, he simply asked his friends occasionally to do 
one little act, in remembrance of him. 

He was wiser than the builders of the pyramids. A 
18 



206 THE CORNER-STONE. 


[Ch. 7. 


The pyramids and the Lord's supper. 


Test of sincerity. 



hundred thousand men, if ancient story be true, were 
employed by one monarch, for twenty years, in rearing 
the pile which was to perpetuate his memory. The 
Savior did the work, and did it better, by a few parting 
words. 

Yes; Jesus Christ left us as a memorial, not a mag- 
nificent thing to be looked at, but a very simple thing to 
be done; and the influence, in keeping the remembrance 
of the Savior before the minds of men, which the simple 
ceremony has exerted, for eighteen centuries, and which 
it still exerts, shows the wisdom of the plan. Its 
very simplicity, too, is the means of rendering it, to a 
considerable extent, a test of the sincerity of professed 
attachment to the Savior; for the ceremony cannot long- 
continue in its simplicity, unless such attachment sus- 
tains it. When love is gone, it becomes unmeaning, 
and, from its very nature, there is nothing but its mean- 
ing to give it interest among men. When the heart 
ceases to be in it, then, there is but one alternative, — 
it must lose its whole value, and ultimately b.e aban- 
doned, or else pomp and parade must come in, to supply 
the interest which grateful recollection ought to give. 
It has accordingly, in some cases, been converted into 
pomp and parade, and in others gradually lost its interest 
and disappeared. But with these dangers on every side, 
the institution has still lived and flourished, and is 
spreading to every nation on the globe. 

We have already, once or twice, alluded to the manner 
in which our Savior selected and established the cere- 
monies of our religion, as evidence of the manner in 
which he regarded them, viz. as means, valuable only 
on account of their conduciveness to an end; — and that 
end too, a moral, not a ceremonial one. This consid- 
eration is important to us now, because it affects the 
degree of strictness, with which we observe these insti- 
tutions in their precise form. If the ceremonies had 



Ch. 7.] THE LAST SUPPER. 20? 

Exact obedience. The father's two directions. Principles of compliance. 

been valuable on their own account, if there had been 
any intrinsic efficacy in them, and if, in consequence of 
this, their details had been minutely prescribed, they 
should have been observed with the most precise and 
scrupulous accuracy. If, on the other hand, they are 
solely valuable on account of their moral expression, so 
to speak, then such precise and scrupulous accuracy is 
not necessary. There ought, certainly, to be no devia- 
tions without sufficient cause, in either case; but a cause 
which would abundantly justify deviation in the latter, 
would not justify it in the former. If for instance a 
father, on leaving home, gives direction that a sick child 
should take a certain medicine at seven o'clock in the 
evening, to be followed two hours afterwards with bath- 
ing, in water prepared in a prescribed way, it would 
be the duty of those left in charge to be precise in com- 
pliance. The efficacy is in the things to be dene, not in 
their moral effect, and consequently the things must be 
done exactly. On the other hand, suppose that he re- 
quested his family to assemble at a certain window, 
where they had often sat with him, every Saturday 
evening, at seven o'clock, to sing a hymn wnich he had 
written and taught them. Here the object is of a differ- 
ent kind, altogether. The directions are just as precise, 
but the common sense of every family would make a 
distinction between the degree of exact precision neces- 
sary in compliance. If, on some evening, company was 
present, and protracted their stay beyond the time as- 
signed, they would assemble to sing their hymn of re- 
membrance half an hour later. But company would not 
have led them to postpone administering the medicine, 
beyond the appointed time. So if the room assigned 
for the meeting was, on some evening, cold, and uncom- 
fortable, they would not hesitate to assemble around the 
fire in another apartment instead of that; or if the 
mother was sick and confined to her chamber, on one 



208 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 7 

Ceremonies of false and true religions. Meaning of * Do this.' 

of the Saturday evenings during the father's absence, 
they would gather round her bed, to si % g their hymn. 
They would, however, by no means, be led to deviate 
so easily from the precise directions in the other case. 
They would not, perhaps, point out to one another the 
philosophical grounds of the distinction, but there would 
be an immediate and spontaneous perception of it, and 
its influence upon their practice would be decided. 

The ceremonies of false religions are of the former 
kind; that is, rather of the former than the latter. Their- 
value does not consist in their moral expression, but in 
their supposed intrinsic efficacy. The Hindoo bathes in 
the Ganges, and the Mussulman mutters his prayers, 
with a view to the efficacy of the ceremony itself. This 
efficacy is all imaginary, we admit, — still it is with a 
view to it that he acts, and consequently he must be 
precise and punctilious as to forms. True religion, 
makes use of outward rites for a different purpose; their 
meaning, and the feelings of the heart with which they 
are performed are every thing, and we are consequently 
held to far less punctilious exactness as to forms. The 
vague and general terms in which these rites were insti- 
tuted, show, as we have already once or twice remarked, 
that our Savior took" this view of them. " Do this in 
remembrance of me." What is meant by doing this? 
What is this, precisely? How much is included in it. 
Does it mean, Eat and drink, in remembrance of me, or 
Eat bread and drink wine, or Eat bread and drink wine, 
together, or Eat bread and drink wine together after a 
supper. I might go on so indefinitely, adding circum- 
stance after circumstance, and inquire how many of all 
are meant to be included in the phrase "Do this." 
The general practice of Christians has decided to stop 
at the third of the above steps, that is, Doing this, means 
Eat bread and drink wine, together, in remembrance of 
me; but they would probably find it difficult to show 



Ch. 


*] 




THE 


LAST SUPPER. 


209 


Circumstances excluded. 




Principles. Moral effect to be secured. 



why they imitate the Savior's example in respect to the 
nature of the food, and to partaking of it in an assembly 
of Christians, and not in the many other circumstances 
which were a part of the transaction then, but are not so 
now. It was in the night, — females were excluded, — 
there was a supper before the ceremony, — and this 
supper was an annual festival. By common consent we 
exclude all these circumstances, in interpreting the 
phrase " Do this." I have said it would be difficult to 
show why we go just so far as we do, and no farther, in 
interpreting the language; I mean it would be difficult 
to find grounds for precisely the selection which has, by 
common consent, been made, in any thing which was 
actually said and done on the occasion. But by taking 
the views of the nature and design of religious rites, 
which are presented above, the case is clear. The 
moral meaning and the moral influence of the ceremony 
being all that are essential, we are regulated by them, 
in regard to the degree of precision with which we fol- 
low the example set us. So far as is convenient, and 
only so far, we conform in respect to the food; so as not 
unnecessarily to vary from the original circumstances. 
We come together to celebrate the ordinance; for the 
assembling of Christians for the purpose, is a circum- 
stance which contributes to the moral effect. We admit 
females, for the same reason. We do not insist on its 
being after a supper, nor at an annual festival, nor in 
the night, nor in an upper chamber, for all these, though 
doubtless they were the circumstances under which the 
institution was established, have no share in the produc- 
tion of the effect. The whole christian world most evi- 
dently takes this view of the ordinance, in practice; and 
our Savior would undoubtedly have been more precise 
and specific in his directions, if he had intended that we 
should take any other view. 

I have (hvelt, perhaps, longer on this subject, thaa 
18* 



210 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 7. 

No dispute on this subject. Principles universally applicable. Formalists. 

many readers will think necessary, because it is one, 
they will say, on which there is no dispute. This is the 
very reason why I have made it the occasion of present- 
ing what, it seems to me, is the true view of the cere- 
monial aspects of Christianity. The principles, which 
appear clear and plain here, because the mind can look 
at them uninfluenced by any bias, are universally appli- 
cable, and it is of immense consequence that every mind 
which is shaping its views of religious truth, should 
entertain right views here. There are formalists in all 
denominations of Christians, and perhaps quite as many 
in those which, in theory, are most decided in their re- 
jection of forms. As society advances, and as new 
denominations arise, new religious customs gradually 
grow up, established first by a few leading Christians, 
and acquiring, in process of years, a very strong ascen- 
dency over the mind. There is no harm in this, if it is 
always borne in mind, that these are all means, not ends, 
and that mora*l effect on the heart and life is the only 
object which is ultimately valuable. There is a great 
tendency in the human mind to forget this, and to sub- 
stitute the sign for the thing signified, — to rest upon the 
mere form, — and to attach that importance to a precise 
compliance with the circumstances of its original insti- 
tution, which belongs only to the moral power it should 
have over the heart. By feeling and acting thus, we 
leave the spirit of Christianity, and approach towards 
the practices and feelings of pagan superstition, where 
form is all, and spirituality nothing. We go to different 
lengths in this approximation, and in some cases, the 
whole journey is made, and the professing Christian, in 
the frigid formality of his observances, seems to come 
out almost entirely upon the pagan ground. The reader 
will, very probably, charge such a fault, however, upon 
other denominations, not upon his own; but there is 
unfortunately, no monopoly of this sin Where it would 



Ch. 7.] THE LAST SUPPER. 211 

No denomination free. Liberality. Difference of opinion unavoidable. 

be perhaps least expected, it sometimes most decidedly 
appears. Many a congregationalist attends his private 
meeting, or stands up to hear an extemporaneous prayer 
with as much of the spirk of the formalist, as ever a 
Catholic felt when counting his beads, or burning can- 
dles before the picture of the virgin. Substituting the 
forms for the spirit of Christianity, is one of the in- 
veterate and universal habits of the human soul; — 
interwoven with all its feelings, and as difficult to be 
eradicated as any one. Its action is less apparent in 
those denominations whose modes of government and 
of worship are not precisely arranged, but it is not less 
real; — and how much less common it is, is perhaps more 
doubtful, than is generally supposed. 

Understand then, Christian, what is the true nature 
and design of a religious ceremony, whether it was 
instituted by Christ, or has gradually grown up as a 
religious custom, in the denomination with which you 
are connected. Consider well that its whole value, and 
its whole power, consists in its spiritual effect on the heart 
and conscience. See that you secure this, and never 
surrender your heart to the deadening influence of 
scrupulous attachmemt to mere external ceremony. 

There is one error on this subject into which we are 
very likely to fall, and of which we are more especially 
in danger, in proportion as we more fully adopt the views 
above presented. The danger is this, that we shall per- 
tinaciously insist that other Christians, and other denom- 
inations particularly, shall come precisely to our standard 
in regard to this subject. ]Now since our Savior left nis 
directions so general, there must inevitably be a differ- 
ence of opinion among Christians in regard to the preci- 
sion with which we must imitate the circumstances of the 
first establishment of these ceremonies; in fact it is not 
improbable that the different circumstances and relations 
of society, render some variety desirable. Now each 



212 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 7 

Case supposed. Wine of Palestine. Each church must judge for itself 

body of Christians is bound to act according to its own 
idea? of the Savior's wishes, and the rest ought not to 
complain. Suppose, for example, a Christian church 
were to come to the conclusion that they ought to make 
use of the wine of Palestine for the ordinance of the 
Lord's supper. They are honest in this opinion, we will 
suppose, and at a considerable expense send to Palestine 
and procure a supply, and always make use of it at 
their communion seasons. We suppose them to be mis- 
taken, — yet still they are honest, and really think that 
the Savior intended them to comply in this particular, 
with his example. They gather therefore quietly by 
themselves, and celebrate the supper according to their 
own views of the requisitions of their Lord. Of course 
they must think that other churches are not complying, 
and must say so; and though they may admit that their 
members are sincere and devoted Christians, they cannot 
consider them as performing aright their official duty 
as a Christian church. Now what, most plainly, is the 
duty of other churches in such a case? Why, to leave 
these their brethren unmolested, and in peace at their 
own communion table, to comply with the directions of 
their Lord according to their own understanding of them, 
to do this pleasantly and good-humoredly, too, without 
any taunts and reproaches about their uncharitableness 
and censoriousness and closeness of communion. 

In the same manner if one denomination suppose some 
circumstances in the mode of ordaining pastors, or ad- 
mitting members to the churches, or some views of 
christian duty, to be essential, while they are not so 
regarded by others, what ought the others to do? Why 
simply to allow them to pursue their own course, unmo- 
lested and in peace. They are bound to act according 
to their own views of the wishes of the Savior. If they 
do honestly consider that some conditions with which 
you have not complied, are essential to a proper celebra- 



Ch. 7.] THE LAST SUPPER. 213 

Modes of ordination. Admission to the church. True intolerance. 

tion of the Lord's supper, they cannot consistently, 
however much they may esteem your piety, admit you 
to their table until you have complied with them. You 
ought not then, in such a case, to stand knocking at the 
door and demanding entrance; — you ought to go quietly 
and spread a table for yourselves. They do not prevent 
it. They simply say, our views and yours differ as to 
what in this point is essential;-— we must be governed by 
our convictions, — therefore in this point, and this only, 
we must separate. 

In the same manner, if a class of Christians think that 
a certain mode of ordination is the only valid one, or that 
certain views of religious truth are essential, they cannot 
of course include those who differ from them in these 
respects in the circle of official ministerial intercourse. 
There is no bigotry or intolerance in this. There is 
certainly no bigotry or intolerance, in a man's doing what 
he himself thinks is right, if he does not molest his 
neighbors, or prevent, by other means than moral ones, 
their doing what they think right. Nor is there any, in 
a church's confining its official measures, strictly to the 
field which is marked out by its own views of official 
duty. The world is wide enough for other churches to 
act freely according to iheir ideas. !No; the intolerance 
and bigotry is all on the other side. It is not in the 
quiet firmness with which a church guards its doors 
according to its own conscientious ideas of duty, but it 
is in loud vociferations of the crowd which has assembled 
without, demanding admittance as a right. If there was 
but one communion table, and but one pulpit in the 
world, the majority in possession should indeed be careful 
whom they excluded; and if the disciples of Christ were, 
or ought to be, united into one great denomination, they 
who should obtain the control of its measures, would rest 
under a most fearful responsibility. But this the Savior 
undoubtedly never intended He made no arrangement 



214 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 7. 

Practical application. Weak and sickly Christians. Directions. 

for such an organization, and did not command it. In 
carrying out his principles, and in extending them through- 
out the globe, Christians unite themselves in companies, 
and link themselves together by ties, just as they please: 
and each band must be governed by its own views of 
truth and duty, and ought to be left without molestation 
by the rest. We may try to alter by argument, the views 
themselves, but not complain of their acting according 
to them, as long as they are entertained; nor load them 
with opprobrious epithets, because their views of church 
policy, compel them to deny our regular official connex- 
ion with it. Their denial can do us no harm, if they 
leave us to act unmolested in our own communion, and 
we ought to leave them to act unmolested in theirs. 

The celebration of the Lord's supper is particularly 
described again in the New Testament, viz. in the epis- 
tle to the Corinthians. Paul there tells his readers that 
there were a great many weak and sicldy Christians in 
their church, and attributes it to their negligence in 
respect to this ordinance. There are weak and sickly 
Christians every where, and the communion service, if it 
was properly understood, would be the most effectual 
means of restoring them to health. In bringing this 
chapter to a conclusion, then, it may be well to call the 
attention of the reader a little to this point. How shall 
we celebrate the Lord's supper? How shall we secure 
the spiritual effect of it, according to the views present- 
ed in the preceding pages? 

Consider what the ceremony means. It is intended 
to bring to our minds the death of Christ, — to remind us 
of his blood flowing, and his body lacerated/or us, — " for 
the remission of sins," as is expressly stated. In order to 
eat the bread then, and drink the cup, worthily, this must 
be in mind, and it is the moral and spiritual effect of this 



Ch. 7.] THE LAST SUPPER. 215 

The sickly Christian. Preparatory lecture. Communion day. 

truth upon the heart, which is to be chiefly sought for 
when we come around the table of the Lord. 

cc It is preparatory lecture to-night," says one of the 
weak, sickly Christians pointed at by Paul, in the pas- 
sage above quoted. " Let me see, — shall I go? " 

He has been all day engaged in the world, and his 
heart is still full of its interests and cares. On the other 
hand, there is the habit of going to the preparatory lec- 
ture. After a contest of a few minutes, between these 
two, the habit, or, as it perhaps should be called, the 
attachment to form, conquers, though he fancies that 
the victory is gained by christian principle.. He walks 
along at the appointed time, either thinking of his world- 
ly plans, or else indulging a feeling of self-complacence 
at his superior interest in religious duty, when he sees 
how few of his brethren are to be there. 

He listens to the discourse, much as he would to any 
other sermon, and applies the general considerations it 
presents, with the same fidelity, to his own case, that 
this class of Christians- usually exemplify. On his way 
home, he may make a remark or two about the discourse, 
or the smallness of the number present, and then the 
world, even if it was actually excluded while he was in 
the house of God, which is more than doubtful, presses 
I in upon him again. The approaching solemnity passes 
from his mind, until, on the next sabbath, when he is 
walking up the aisle to his pew, his eye catches the plate 
arranged for the ordinance, and he says to himself, " Oh, 
it is communion to-day." 

During the administration of the ordinance, he endea- 
vors to listen to the pastor's remarks, but he finds it 
somewhat difficult to attend to them. Some few very 
vague and general religious impressions pass through 
his mind, and when the cup is handed to him, he looks 
serious, and takes his portion with a very reverential air, 
and something like a general supplication for forgiveness, 



216 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 7. 

Feelings at the communion table. Its true design. Its proper effects. 

and for greater measures of holiness, pass through his 
mind. There is something like a slight feeling of im- 
patience at the delay while the elements are distributing 
to the others. And jet is not impatience, exactly, — but 
he has nothing to do with his thoughts, and he feels a 
little satisfaction when the ceremony is over. It is very 
slight, and he will not acknowledge it even to himself, — 
but it is in his heart; and he walks home feeling that he 
has been discharging a duty, which, though it was not 
an unpleasant one certainly, he still is glad that it is 
done. 

It is a dead letter; a lifeless, heartless, useless form; 
and thousands of Christians every where, thus pervert 
the ordinance which God designed to be perhaps one of 
the most efficacious means of grace that the Christian 
is permitted to enjoy. 

Now in order clearly to understand the mode in which 
this ordinance ought to be celebrated, so as to secure its 
spiritual blessings, let the reader call to mind what was 
said in the close of the last chapter, respecting the 
means by which the soul is to come to Christ in faith, so 
as to secure forgiveness for the past, and spiritual strength 
for the future, through a union with him. The great de- 
sign of the Lord's supper is simply to renew this union. 
When we first repent of sin, and return to duty, we come 
to the Savior, and seek such a connexion with him, that 
our sins may be pardoned through his sufferings and 
death, and that we may have strength furnished us from 
him, to go on our way safely in future. If this change 
was entire and complete, — if it overturned for ever the 
dominion of sin, and established the perpetual and per- 
fect reign of holiness, we should perhaps never have 
occasion to repeat the transaction, and our celebration 
of the supper would be simply an act of grateful re- 
membrance, — a memorial merely of the Savior's love. 
But it is not so. Sin continues its hold. It is always 



Ch. 7.] THE LAST SUPPE1.. 217 



Examination. Confession. Reunion. Partaking unworthily. 

ready to rise to re-assert successfully its power, and the 
communion season returns to us from time to time, to 
give us an opportunity of breaking free again and again, 
and seeking by the moral power of the sufferings and 
death we celebrate, new relief for the conscience, new 
pardon for sin, new spiritual life, new peace and higher 
happiness. Whenever therefore it returns, it should 
bring us to a most thorough and effectual investigation 
of our standing and progress as disciples of the Savior. 
It is the time of periodical settlement between our souls 
and God, when the account should be most carefully 
examined, and all sins brought out fully to view, every 
secret hold which the world has upon us should be dis- 
covered and broken, and thus the soul should be brought 
into a state to give itself away anew, and without reserve 
to its Master's work. The world and its cares are to be 
left behind, all past sins fully examined, and fully ac- 
knowledged, and the responsibility for them is to be 
brought and laid upon him who is mighty to save. 
Peace would then return. The collected anxieties and 
the troubles of conscience would all disappear. Habits 
of sin beginning to be formed would be broken up, and 
the soul refreshed and restored, and reunited to its 
Savior, would have made, at each successive return of 
the solemn ceremony, a decided advance in holiness and 
happiness. But how different is it in fact. We come to 
the scene of our Master's sufferings and death, and bring 
the world all with us. One comes with his quarrels, 
another with his business; this brother leads some dar- 
ling sin in by the hand, and that one is cold and hard in 
heart, looking on with stupid indifference at the solemn 
symbols. Of one thing, however, we may be sure. The 
design of this ordinance is very clear, and God has indi- 
cated very plainly what are the feelings with which he 
wishes us to observe it; and he has left, in the most de- 
cisive language, his warning of the danger of our thus 

19 



218 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 7. 

Guilt and consequences of it. Lukewarm Christians. 

coming and profaning what he has made sacred. The 
institution was designed to have a deep meaning, and to 
produce a powerful effect. By coming without examin- 
ation, and without preparation of heart, and without a 
desire for the spiritual blessings it is designed to pro- 
cure, we are doing all we can to degrade what God has 
elevated, — to destroy its character and power, and its 
spiritual influence, and to bring it to contempt. 

I need not repeat the language in which God has 
threatened those who eat and drink unworthily. It would 
be plain, if such language had not been used, that God 
must consider the intrusion of worldliness and sin, into 
the places which he had endeavored to make sacred, as 
an offence of the highest character. The prosperity 
of his kingdom, in this world, depends more upon the 
purity of his church, and the elevation of its standard 
of piety, than upon any thing else; and throughout the 
whole of the New Testament, no design is more ap- 
parent, or more earnestly pursued, than that of separat- 
ing his friends, by a clear line of demarcation, from his 
enemies, and keeping his church pure. The worldly 
Christians, or rather the worldly professors of religion, 
crowd around this line, and obliterate all its distinct- 
ness. They allure many a sincere follower to it, who 
would otherwise keep away, and thus they are thwarting, 
most directly and most effectually, the progress of the 
Savior's kingdom. If all the cold and worldly and indif- 
ferent professors of religion could be exchanged, each for 
ten boisterous and inveterate enemies, piety might pro- 
claim a jubilee at the brightening prospects of her cause. 

But what shall we do, perhaps some one may ask, if 
we find, when the time of the communion season arrives, 
that our hearts are not in the right state, — shall we 
stay away? — I have nothing to say about staying away. 
What you had better do, if you a»-e z professing Chris- 
tian, and will not give up the world and sin, when the 



Ch. 7.] 


THE LAST SUPPER. 219 


The sad alternative. 


The Savior's farewell Hymn. 



time arrives for renewing your solemn consecration of 
yourself to your Maker's service, I do not know. It is 
a sad alternative, if you are fixed upon it, either to dis- 
obey Christ's command altogether, or to comply hypo- 
critically. I am sure I cannot tell you which to choose. 
One thing however is certain, that if you had any ade- 
quate ideas of your obligations and your accountability, 
,-r— if you felt at all what it is to go into the very presence 
of the Savior, and among his best friends, — yourself a 
secret enemy; if, in a word, you could see the solemn 
ceremony which he instituted as he sees it, you would 
be afraid to go and be the Judas there. 

" And when they had sung an hymn they went out 
into the Mount of Olives." The Savior and his disciples 
stood around their table and sang an hymn. It was the 
Redeemer's last public act, his final farewell. He had 
presided over many an assembly, guiding their devotions 
or explaining to them the principles of religion. Some- 
times the thronging multitudes had gathered around him 
on the sea shore; sometimes they had crowded into a 
private dwelling, and sometimes he sat in the synagogue, 
and explained the law. But the last moment had come; 
he was presiding in the last assembly, which, by his 
mortal powers, he should ever address, and when the 
hour for separation came, the last tones in which his 
voice uttered itself, were heard in song. 

What could have been their hymn? Its sentiments 
and feelings, they who can appreciate the occasion, may 
perhaps conceive, but what were its words? Beloved 
disciple, why didst thou not record them? They should 
have been sung in every nation, and language and clime. 
We would have fixed them in our hearts, and taught 
them to our children, and when we came together, to 
commemorate our Redeemer's sufferings, we would never 
have separated without singing his parting hymn 



220 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 8 

Dramatic interest of the narrative of the crucifixion. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE CRUCIFIERS. 
" The Lord looketh on the heart." 

An instance of as high dramatic beauty and interest as 
the Bible furnishes, is to be found in the arrangement of 
the circumstances connected with the great final scene 
which it portrays. Fiction could not have arranged 
these circumstances with more admirable adaptation to 
the production of effect, and yet nature and truth had 
never more complete, or more evident control. Perhaps 
the most remarkable feature of the picture, is the number 
of distinct and strongly marked characters which appear 
as actors. Here is irreligion in all the variety of its 
forms. Hostility to God sends its representatives in all 
the leading shapes which it assumes, to exhibit themselves 
conspicuously here, in the view of all the world. 

This was intended for our instruction. Characters 
portrayed in the New Testament are portrayed for the 
purpose of throwing light upon duty, or upon the nature 
and tendencies of sin; but we shield ourselves from all 
influence in this case, on account of the enormity of the 
consequences which resulted. No man thinks of compar- 
ing himself with Pontius Pilate; and Christians, though 
they often quote the example of Peter, seldom think that 
they have been guilty of his sin. The enormity of the 
crime, to which sin, in this case, led, has invested the 
whole transaction with such a character, as, in the view 
of men, to place it entirely beyond the region of reproof 
and warning to them. One great design, unquestionably, 
in blowing this scene to be acted, was to let the whole 
human family see, what disastrous effects would be pro- 
duced, in peculiar circumstances, by very common sins 



Gh. 8.] THE CRUCIFIERS. 


221 


Its moral effect often lost. 


Three stages of guilt. 



We evade the intended effect altogether, by setting the 
whole transaction aside; — disconnecting it from all ordi- 
nary exhibitions of human nature, on account of the ex- 
traordinariness of the effects, when we ought to unite it 
with them, on account of the commonness of the cause; 
and thus, though there are unquestionably thousands 
even in the Christian church, and in fair standing, who 
are habitually governed by the principles of Judas Iscar- 
iot, there is not one in the Christian world, so degraded 
and so abandoned, that he would not resent being called 
by his name. 

This is owing to wrong ideas of the nature of guilt, 
as it is recognised by God's law; and we shall here 
devote a few paragraphs to this subject, both because it 
is of general importance to the young Christian to have 
clear ideas respecting it, and because a right under- 
standing of it is absolutely essential to enable us to 
receive the proper moral. lessons taught us by the nar- 
rative of the crucifixion of the Savior. 

Guilt then, as it generally exhibits itself in this world, 
exists in three stages, proceeding regularly from the first 
to its consummation in the lost. These stages are more 
or less distinctly marked in all the various cases which 
occur. We may however take as a convenient instance 
for illustration, the sin of Joseph's brethren in selling 
him as a slave. Let us look a few moments at this case. 

The first stage of their guilt consists in the indulgence 
of envious and malignant feelings. They were the feel- 
ings which ultimately led to the commission of the crime. 
It is said " they hated him, and could not speak peace- 
ably unto him," and when he innocently told them his 
dream, they said, " * shalt thou indeed reign over us?' and 
they hated him yet the more for his words." Here now 
is guilt, but it is the guilt of feeling, not of conduct. Here 
are no overt acts of violence or of unkindness, — not even 
anj plans or determinations to commit such acts. It |js 
19* 



222 










THE 


CORNER-STONE. 






[Ch. 


8 


First 


stage; 


gu 


iity 


feel 


ing. 


Second 


stage; 


guilty 


intentions. 



the heart alone which has gone astray. They are filled 
with feelings of envy and hatred towards their brother. 
and though, as is very often the case at the present 
day, when a heart is filled with hateful passions, the 
brow might have been smooth, and the conduct right, 
and even though the tone of voice had been gentle and 
kind, and not a glance of the eye had betrayed the hid- 
den anger, — still, on the principles of God's law, they 
had committed great sin. It was not the sin of action, 
nor of intention; but of the heart. 

The second stage of their guilt consists in their plans 
and determinations. They began to form the design to do 
some violence to their brother. This stage, which it will 
be readily perceived, is distinct from the other, and de- 
cidedly in advance of it, is described in the following 
words. 

" When they saw him coming they conspired against 
him to slay him. They said one to another, Behold this 
dreamer cometh. Come now therefore, and let us slay 
him, and cast him into some pit, and we will say some 
evil beast hath devoured him, and we shall see what will 
become of his dreams! " 

This is plainly a distinct stage from the other, and in 
advance of it. A man may cherish revengeful and malig- 
nant thoughts, and yet never intend to carry them for- 
ward into action. There are a thousand considerations of 
policy which tend to restrain him. There is the voice of 
public opinion, the fear cf punishment, the dread of re- 
morse ; and while he hates his brother, and cordially wishes 
him injury, his hand may be held back by the thousand 
circumstances of restraint, with which a kind Providence 
has hemmed him in. By and by, however, the rising, 
swelling flood of wicked emotion breaks its barriers. He 
prepares himself for the execution of deeds of iniquity 
His mind passes from the mere indulgence of the wicked 
feeling itself, to the altogether different state, of deliber- 






Ch. 8.] THE CRUCIFIERS. 223 

Third stage; guilty action. Illustrations. Sudden acts. 

ately intending to commit some open acts of sin. He 
has thus advanced one distinct step towards the consum- 
mation of guilt. 

Again, the third and last stage of this disease is the 
open act. It consummates the guilt, and seals the con- 
sequences. In this case, they took their brother, and 
let him down into a deep pit in the wilderness, intending 
; to leave him in its dismal solitude, to die of hunger and 
despair. Avarice, however, pleaded for his life, and, as 
by selling him, they could get twenty pieces of silver, 
they changed his destiny from death to slavery. They 
sold him to a wandering tribe of half savage strangers, 
and quietly saw him led away, they scarcely knew 
where, or for what; though they could have expected 
nothing for the brother whom they had thus betrayed, 
but a life of suffering and toil and chains. 

Such are the three distinct stages of progress in guilt. 
And let it be understood that the distinction between these 
stages is not, by any means, peculiar to this case, nor 
even more striking here, than it usually is in fact. They 
all happen to be distinctly noticed and described by the 
sacred writer, which makes this example peculiarly suit- 
ed to our purpose. But in all cases, when open sin is 
perpetrated at all, it advances step by step in this way. 
First come the guilty feelings, — burning in the heart, 
and though restrained for a time, they soon acquire 
strength which external influence can no longer control. 
Then comes the guilty intention, when the mind decides 
against conscience and duty, and prepares itself to go 
forth to sin; and finally, the open act of iniquity closes the 
scene. It is true, that in many cases, these stages suc- 
ceed each other with almost instantaneous rapidity. A 
man receives a sudden and deep injury from his enemy; 
— he grasps a glittering dagger, and plunges it to his 
heart. All is over in a moment, but the sin, though in- 
stantaneous, is complicated, and a very slight degree of 



224 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 8 

God's view of guilt. Difference between divine and human laws. 

care in making the analysis, will enable any one to dis- 
tinguish between the feelings, and the intention, and the 
action, which it clearly comprises. 

Now it is the first of these stages, which the law of 
God chiefly regards; for it is plain that it is this alone 
which is the true index of character. The rest depends, 
in far too great a degree, on accidental circumstan- 
ces, to be taken much into the account in estimating 
guilt. Whether Joseph's brethren, for example, would 
ever form any plan for doing him injury, must evidently 
have depended upon the occurrence of favorable op- 
portunities of carrying such a plan into effect. In a 
Christian country, the circumstances of society would 
render such an act of iniquity as this, impracticable, 
and public opinion is in such a state, as to operate 
as a most powerful, and in most cases, an effectual re- 
straint, against any such deeds of violence. And yet 
there are thousands of cases, where the feelings between 
brother and brother are precisely similar to those which, 
in this case, led to the commission of an atrocious 
crime. 

Now it is the almost universal practice in this world, 
to attach far too much relative importance to the overt 
acts of sin, and too little, to the state of heart from which 
those acts proceed. The cause of this is two-fold. 
First, men have very inadequate conceptions of the 
spirituality of God's law, in any respect; and secondly, 
human laws necessarily relate almost exclusively to ex- 
ternal acts, and public sentiment feels the influence, and 
imbibes the spirit of public laws. Human laws, as we 
have already intimated in another place, and for an- 
other purpose, have an object entirely different from that 
of divine. 

Their aim is, not to distribute to every man the just 
recompense which he deserves, nor to purify hearts, and 
bring back sinners to holiness and peace These things 



Ch. 8.J THE CRUCIFIERS. 225 



Consequences no criterion of guilt. The murderer. 

arc rot the ultimate design of human laws. Their object 
is simply to protect the community, from the aggressions of 
evil men. Now a wicked feeling does, comparatively, 
no immediate injury to society, and as protection is the 
aim of law and government among men, they yield the 
ground of malicious and envious feelings, and even 
intentions; and taking a stand upon the nearest limit 
of the open act, they say to human passions, <l Hither 
shalt thou come, but no farther." It is here alone, that 
human law arms itself with its penalties, and this is the 
whole field of its conflict with the wickedness of man. 

God's law has, however, a very different object. Its 
design is not merely to repress the outbreaking of sin, 
so as to protect men from its injuries, — but to remove and 
eradicate for ever the guilty spirit. It seeks not to arrest 
the consequences, but to destroy the cause. Its design 
is to ascertain the true character, to deal with every one 
as his true character deserves, and, if possible, to bring 
the wandering and miserable sinner back to duty and to 
happiness. Human laws say therefore, to man, " Take 
care that you never carry your sins so far as to encroach 
upon your neighbor's rights, — we must secure protec- 
tion." God's law says to him, " You must not sin at all." 
The one denounces punishments in proportion to the 
injury which is done, — the other regulates its penalties 
by the exact measure of the secret guilt incurred. A 
human government grasps a man who has plunged his 
knife into his neighbor's bosom; but when a skilful phy- 
sician tries his power, — stops the flowing blood, allays 
the rising fever, and saves the endangered life, it imme- 
diately relaxes its grasp, and says in spirit, " Go free 
from the charge of murder; the physician who stopped 
the injury, has saved your life. We look only at conse- 
quences." But the divine government will arrest the 
criminal as he endeavors to move away, and say to him, 
li Stop, you are a murderer. God looks not at the con- 



226 THE CORNER-STONE. [Cll. 8. 

The feelings of the heart and external conduct. 

sequences, but at the guilt. Whoso hateth his brother 
is a murderer." 

For these, and perhaps other reasons, human laws, 
and consequently to a great extent, public sentiment, has 
condemned, almost exclusively, in this world, the open 
acts of wickedness; and thus men, if their conduct is 
fair, are and always have been prone to consider it as 
of very little consequence, what corrupt desires, or 
raging passions possess their hearts. If the fires do not 
flash out to view, they care little how luridly they burn 
within. But God sees not as man sees. He regards 
the heart as the true seat of virtue and of vice, and the 
external conduct, which we notice so attentively, he 
almost passes by; his eye looks through all these ex- 
terior coverings, and, penetrating to the inmost soul, he 
comes to a contest with iniquity in the very heart and 
centre of its reign. 

How obvious and unquestionable is the principle that 
the external conduct is regulated quite as much by the 
circumstances in which one is placed, as by the true 
character; and that therefore external conduct is no safe 
criterion of character. A thousand illustrations of this 
principle might be drawn from the most common occur- 
rences of life. A lady of elegance and refinement, mov- 
ing in high rank in society, surrounded by circumstances 
which most effectually forbid the open exhibition of the 
evil passions of the heart, by any of the rough forms in 
which they often show themselves, cherishes, we will 
suppose, envy or jealousy, which soon ripens into anger 
towards an acquaintance; and in peculiar circumstan- 
ces, it is possible that she may be almost continually 
under the influence of these feelings, so that she lies 
down at night, and rises in the morning, with these bad 
passions rankling in her bosom. But in the presence of 
the object of her displeasure, and surrounded by society, 
how possible is it for all external indication of her feel- 



C'h. 8.] THE CRUCIFIERS. 227 

The lady. The rude boy. Application of these principles. 

ings to be restrained. Her brow is smooth, her eye is 
mild, — her tone is gentle; — and so completely have 
the circumstances in which Providence has placed her, 
trained her to the necessity and to the habit of civility, 
that she dares not transgress. A rude and savage boy, 
with the same passions, and precisely the same state of 
heart, not being controlled by these circumstances of 
restraint, displays his passions by open malediction, or 
by clubs and stones. Now how different are the views 
which the world takes of such cases as these. And I 
am far from saying that they must necessarily be equal 
in guilt. The passions which are the same in kind, in 
both, may differ in degree. What I wish to say, is, that 
God looks at the passions of the heart, and not at the 
open exhibitions of them, which the circumstances of 
the individual may lead him to make. This is what is 
meant by the passage, " Whoso hateth his brother is a 
murderer." So with all other sins. A man's character 
for honesty does not, in the eye of God, depend upon his 
not stealing, but upon his being, in heart, cordially will- 
ing and desirous that all around him should enjoy fully 
their rights; his character for benevolence, not upon his 
deeds of charity, but upon his heartfelt desires that all 
connected with him should be happy; — his character for 
truth, not upon his refraining from directly falsifying his 
word, — but upon his being sincere and hones, in heart. 
Mankind do not consider these distinctions. A very 
large part of the virtue of this world is the virtue of cir- 
cumstances, not of character; that is, it is no virtue at 
all; and yet it is esteemed and applauded by men, as if 
it originated in the loftiest moral principle. 

But the reader may perhaps inquire what these re- 
marks have to do with the crucifixion of the Savior. 
They have this to do with it. The principles we have 
been considering show us that though the crucifixion, 
as an event, — a transaction, may have been extraordinary 



228 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 8. 

The characters of the crucifiers. Their characters common. 

and dreadful in the extreme, it does not thence follow 
that as sin it was very extraordinary. Certain sinful pro- 
pensities and passions in that case led to consequences, 
which cannot in ordinary cases flow from them. But 
precisely the same principles and passions may reign in 
the heart, and load it with an equal burden of guilt, though 
the circumstances in which the actor is placed, may be 
such as entirely to modify, or even effectually to restrain 
the results. If we wish then to derive the intended ad- 
vantage from this portion of Scripture history, we must 
consider these things, — we must make these discrimi- 
nations, between the sin itself, and the particular forms 
in which, from the peculiar circumstances of the case, it 
then assumed. We must look at the characters of the 
actors, rather than their deeds; for in character, we may 
be similar to them, though from the entirely different 
circumstances in which we are placed, we have not, 
and we never can have the opportunity to commit the 
crimes they perpetrated. I shall endeavor, therefore, 
as I go on to the examination of the story, to bring to 
view, as clearly as possible, the characters of those con- 
cerned in it: with particular reference, too, to the aspects 
which similar characters would assume at the present 
day. If I am not very greatly deceived, Pontius Pilate 
and Judas Iscariot, and even the Roman soldiers, have 
far more imitators and followers, than is generally sup- 
posed, and that too, within the very pale of the Chris- 
tian church. 

We left the Savior, at the close of the last chapter, 
going out, late at night, with his disciples, from the place 
where they had held their last assembly. They passed 
out of the gate, and went down the hill, across the rivu- 
let which flowed through the valley, and ascended the 
mount of Olives on the other side One however was 
absent. 



Ch. 8.] THE CRUCIFIERS. 229 

Judas Iscariot. His probable character and plan* 

Judas Iscariot, it will be recollected, had left the as- 
sembly some time before. He had his arrangements to 
mature for delivering the Savior to the soldiers appoint- 
ed to make him prisoner. It seems that the leading 
priests had been desirous of taking him, for the purpose 
of bringing him to trial, but they did not dare to do it 
openly, for fear of an uproar among the people; their 
only other plan, therefore, was to find out his private re- 
treats, and send an armed band for him at some time 
when he was alone with his friends. This plan it was 
difficult to execute, for Jesus generally withdrew himself 
very privately, when his work was done, and they did 
not know how to find him. Judas relieved them of the 
difficulty. 

But who was Judas? let us look a little at his history 
and character. 

There seems to be no evidence against the supposi- 
tion that he was just such a man as any other of those 
worldly professors of religion, which are to be found by 
thousands in the Christian church at the present day. 
It is plain that he was not that abandoned and hardened 
reprobate which he is very generally supposed to have 
been: if so, he would not have hung himself, when he 
found what were the consequences of his crime. It does 
not seem to be at all improbable, that, when he joined 
the Savior's cause, he thought he was sincere. A man 
would not be likely to connect himself with such a 
cause for the express purpose of making money. This 
is possible, but certainly very improbable. It seems far 
more reasonable to suppose, that he became a professed 
disciple, as thousands do at the present day, with his 
heart unchanged, though not aware of his own true 
character. 

They who have a strong love for the world, have often 
no uncommon share of worldly wisdom; or, at least, those 
who love money know well how to take care of it ; an^ 
20 



230 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 8. 

Trust conferred upon him. His present followers. The church. 

Judas, like many others since his day, was appointed tc 
a trust which proved a very dangerous one to him. In 
fact, the very love for such a trust which fitted him to 
discharge the duties of it succesfully, made those duties 
very dangerous to him. It is altogether probable that 
love of money acquired its ascendency over him very 
gradually. It almost always does. Very few persons 
have the hardihood to unite themselves with the Christian 
church deliberately, with the design of making their con- 
nexion with it a mere source of profit; but very many 
who join it professedly with other designs, do, in fact, 
gradually turn their connexion with it to this purpose. 
They are deceived at first about the sincerity of their 
motives; they feel some sort of interest in religion, which 
interest they mistake for genuine piety; but as it is with- 
out foundation it soon disappears, the world gradually 
regains its hold, and as it comes back and fixes its reign, 
it leads the man to avail himself of every advantage 
which he can derive from his new position, to increase 
his own earthly stores. At first he does this without 
particular injury to the cause he has espoused, but soon 
the. claims of interest and of his master's service come 
into slight collision. The latter yields, though he is so 
blinded he is not aware of it. The cases become more 
frequent and more decided; but the progress of blind- 
ness goes on as fast as the progress of sin, so that he 
continues undisturbed, though he is as really betraying 
the cause of his master, as if he was actuary guiding an 
armed band to his private retreat. 

There is no end to the cases which might be stated in 
exemplification of this. We will suppose one or two. 
A question arises in a certain town about the erection of 
a place of public worship. The situation of the building 
will affect the value of the property in its vicinity, and 
a certain wealthy professor of religion, with reference 
selely to this effect upon his property, is determined that 



Ch. 8.] THE CKUCIFIERS. 231 

Various ways of betraying Christ's cause. The worldly pastor. 

the building shall be in one place, while the rest of the 
church are determined it shall be in another. To make 
the case simple, we will suppose that the majority are 
guided by good principles in their selection, that they 
consult the best interests of the Savior's cause in the 
decision they have made, and consequently that the fault 
is all on the side of the single wealthy man. Such is 
however his influence, that he can throw embarrassment, 
and insuperable difficulty in the way of the rest. He 
divides the Savior's friends, alienates one from another, 
and is thus the instrument of destroying the peace of the 
church, and extinguishing the light of its piety. Years 
do not heal the wounds he makes in the Savior's cause. 
He betrays it, and he betrays it for money, — just as 
truly as if he had been directly bribed by thirty pieces 
of silver to deliver up his Lord. In fact he does even a 
greater injury than that; and it is by no means certain, 
which will be found to have incurred the heaviest doom, 
he who sold the Savior's life to Roman soldiers, or he 
who, from the same motive, turns traitor to the church, 
and breaks down the barriers for the admission of spirit- 
ual foes. The latter certainly betrays a more valued 
object, and delivers it too, to more dreadful foes; for Jesus 
Christ has given most abundant proof that he loves the 
church far more than his own personal safety, and that 
he fears discord and hatred and spiritual death, far more 
than the insults and injuries of Roman soldiers, or even 
than the unutterable sufferings of hour after hour upon 
the cross. 

But let us take another case. It is that of a worldly 
pastor, who consents to receive in charge a branch of 
his master's church, when his motive is his pay. He 
neglects his appropriate work, and devotes his time and 
his attention, and gives all his heart to the work of in- 
creasing his stores. He does it privately and silently, 
but the world around him soon understand it. They are 



232 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 8 

The merchant. The probable intentions of Judas. 

quick to perceive hypocrisy, and to detect the true char- 
acter of worldliness, however dexterously it may clothe 
itself in the garb of piety. The money-getting disciple 
thinks, perhaps, that all is going on well. He performs 
his duties with punctilious formality, but his heart is not 
in the work, and the souls within his influence are only 
chilled by the coldness of the form. In a word, the 
cause committed to him is betrayed, — it is betrayed, too, 
for money; and if it is true that in the sight of God, the 
heart, and not the particular acts by which the heart may 
manifest itself, is the criterion of character, he must 
expect to stand with Judas when the time of reckoning 
shall come. 

How many times has a man of business, professing to 
love the Savior, betrayed his cause by violating his prin- 
ciples, and brought open disgrace upon it, in the eyes 
of the world. He deals in commodities which are de- 
structive to the souls and bodies of men, or he acts on 
principles which are entirely inconsistent with christian 
character. Unjust, oppressive, and miserly, he dis- 
graces the name which he has hypocritically assumed. 
But he accomplishes his object; — he acquires the money 
for which he is willing to sell his master's cause. Even 
Judas was paid. He secures also his other object, of 
being called a Christian. He however betrays the 
cause. For the mass of mankind bring down their con- 
ceptions of religion to the rank of the lowest pretender 
to it whom they can find; so that he who serves the 
world and sin, while he pretends to be a Christian, does 
not generally disgrace himself, he degrades Christianity* 
Still he accomplishes his objects. He is called a Chris- 
tian, and makes his money; but he must rank among the 
traitors at last. 

Judas had no idea, probably, that any very serious 
consequences would have resulted from what he was 
about to do He might have known, indeed, had . 



Ch. 8.] THE CRUCIFIERS. 



Judas' excuses. The midnight scene. Jerusalem. The valley. The garden. 

thought about it, but he probably thought of little but 
his thirty pieces of silver. If he did reflect at all, it 
was probably only to quiet himself with the excuses, 
which, in similar circumstances, men always make; such 
as that it was his duty to increase his property by all 
honest means, — that there could be no great harm in 
merely introducing the soldiers to the Savior, — that if 
he did not give them the information they desired, some- 
body else certainly would. All the ordinary excuses 
would have applied perfectly here. 

However this might be, the wretched man went at 
midnight to the place of rendezvous; and while he afld 
the soldiers who were to accompany him, were receiving 
their directions and forming their plans in the city, the 
Savior was bending under the burden of those intolerable 
but mysterious sufferings, which have thrown an eternal 
gloom over the garden of Gethsemane. Upon what a 
scene the moon, which was always full at the time of 
the Jewish passover, must have looked down, at this sad 
hour. 

It is midnight; the moon is high, and the streets of 
Jerusalem are deserted and still, except when the foot- 
steps of some solitary passenger re-echo a moment upon 
the ear, and then die away. Beyond the walls, even 
deeper silence and solitude reign; every bird is at its 
rest, and in the still night air, we can hear the brook 
murmuring through the valley. In the garden on the 
other side too, the consecrated place of prayer, every 
zephyr is hushed, every leaf is in repose, and the moon 
is silvering, with its cold light, the outlines of the foliage, 
and brightening on the distant hills. 

It was midnight, the hour of stillness and rest, but yet 

the whole scene was not one of repose. The scattered 

disciples of Jesus waited for their Master, who was 

bending down in his lonely retreat, under the weight 

20* 



234 THE CORNER-STOtfE. [Ch. 8. 

The coming forth of the soldiers. Apparent discrepancy. 

or suffering which we can neither appreciate nor com- 
prehend. And in some lurking place in the silent city, 
the rough soldiers were lighting their lanterns, and girding 
on their weapons, and forming their plans. Presently 
they issue forth, and pass on from street to street, now 
in light and now in shadow, stealing along probably in 
careful silence, lest they might arouse some of the people 
and provoke the interference which their masters dread- 
ed. At this moment, what a spectacle must the whole 
scene have presented to any one who could have looked 
down upon the whole. The dark betrayer, walking in 
advance of his band with cautious steps, half fearing, 
and half rejoicing in his anticipated success; — the care- 
less soldiers following, to execute a work which they 
probably did not distinguish from any other similar deed 
which they often performed; — the disciples, scattered 
through the valley, and in the garden, some probably 
anxious and unhappy, and others, overcome with bodily 
and mental exhaustion, sunk in sleep; — Jesus Christ, 
struggling in solitude, under the pressure of sufferings 
which overwhelmed him with indescribable agitation, and 
almost unnerved his soul. There must have been some- 
thing uncommon in an anguish, which could carry the 
Savior's fortitude to its utmost limit. On the cross he 
was calm. 

But we must go on with the story. One of the most 
striking proofs of the genuineness and truth of the nar- 
ratives of this transaction which are recorded in the 
New Testament, is the apparent discrepancy between 
the two accounts of the scene which occurred, when 
Judas and his band arrived at the place to which Jesus 
had retired. That this discrepancy may be the better 
understood, we place the two accounts in opposite col- 
umns 



( ,h. 8.] 



THE CRUCIFIERS. 



235 



xlie two accounts. 



Fearlessness of truth. 



Explanation. 



Matt. 26 : 47—50. 

And while he yet spake, lo 
Judas, one of the twelve, came, 
and with him a great multitude 
with swords and staves, from the 
chief priests and elders of the 
people. 

Now he that betrayed him gave 
them a sign, saying, Whomso- 
ever I shall kiss, that same is he ; 
hold him fast. And forthwith 
he came to Jesus and said, Hail 
Master , and kissed him. 

And Jesus said unto him, 
Friend, wherefore art thou come ? 
Then came they and laid hands 
on Jesus and took him. 



John 18 : 3—8. 

Judas then, having received a 
band of men and officers from 
the chief priests and Pharisees, 
cometh thither with lanterns, and 
torches and weapons. 

Jesus therefore, knowing all 
things that should come upon 
him, went forth, and said unto 
them, Whom seek ye ? 

They answered him, Jesus of 
Nazareth. Jesus saith unto tLem, 
I am he. And Judas also, which 
betrayed him, stood with them. 

As soon then as he had said 
unto them, I am he, they went 
backward, and fell to the ground. 

Then asked he them again, 
Whom seek ye? And they said, 
Jesus of Nazareth. 

Jesus answered, I have told 
you that I am he. If therefore ye 
seek me, let these go their way. 



Fabricators of a story would never have left such a 
discrepancy as this; and yet it is precisely such an one, 
as two original witnesses would have been almost certain 
to have fallen into, in narrating the circumstances of 
such a case. Scenes of calm and quiet action, where but 
few individuals are concerned, and incidents succeed each 
other with quiet regularity, may be described perhaps 
in nearly the same language by different and indepen- 
dent observers; — but in a scene of tumult and confusion, 
where many are acting and talking together, each in a 
great degree regardless of the rest, faithful witnesses 
who describe what they actually see, will tell very differ- 
ent stories. A large number of the discrepancies of the 
Bible are of this character, and they are the most strik- 
ing proofs of the fearless honesty of the witnesses who 
recorded the facts. 



236 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 8. 

The encounter. Resistance. Binding the prisoner. 

Judas came with a preconcerted part to perform. He 
had arranged every thing beforehand, and probably he 
had, as it were, every look and action committed to 
memory. He had braced himself up to his work, and 
had fixed its details with so much minuteness, that he 
could perform his part almost mechanically, as soon as 
the proper moment should arrive. This is human na- 
ture as it shows itself on all such occasions. It learns 
its task, when it has one of an agitating nature to per- 
form, or is to act in any extraordinary emergency; and 
then it comes up to the moment of action, with a sort 
of mental momentum which carries it through, right 
or wrong, and leaves it very little power to modify its 
course, or to adapt it to any new or unexpected circum- 
stances. Judas came with his plan thus formed; Jesus 
had also his own course marked out, and the almost 
mechanical determination of the one, came into collision 
with the fearless and lofty energy of the other. The 
soldiers fell back; perhaps they did not know till they 
saw him, who it was whom they were sent to bring; and 
in the confusion of the encounter, each witness has re- 
corded what struck most forcibly his own observation. 

There was a slight resistance, but Jesus stopped it, 
and surrendered himself a prisoner. The soldiers re- 
gained their courage, after the momentary alarm excited 
by the Savior's sudden appearance, and began to secure 
their victim. There was enough in their rough ferocity 
to terrify the disciples, and they fled. The soldiers 
made perhaps some effort to secure them too. They 
certainly endeavored a short time after, to seize a young 
man, on their way, who came out in his night dress to 
ascertain the cause of the commotion which he heard 
At any rate the disciples fled, and the soldiers had no- 
thing to do but to secure their prisoner. 

They bound him; — and binding, under such circum- 
stances, is a very different thing from what most of our 



Ch. 8. J THE CRUCIFIERS 23? 

Jesus before the Priests. Their two charges. Blasphemy. 

readers would suppose. The cords are not drawn lightly 
around the wrists of a military prisoner. They secured 
him, and returned towards the city. The priests were 
too deeply interested in the triumphs they were about to 
enjoy, to wait quietly for the regular time of trial. Some 
of them even came out with the soldiers toward the place 
where Jesus was taken, and others assembled in the pal- 
ace of the High Priest, and Jesus was taken directly 
into the midst of them. Here they spent some time in 
collecting their testimony, and framing their charges, 
and urging on each other to a higher pitch of excite- 
ment, and to more determined and inveterate hostility. 

There might possibly be a case in which men might 
be deceived in regard to the character of a good man, and 
might press him very severely with the effects of their 
displeasure, from honest, though mistaken convictions 
of his guilt. That this, however, was not the case here, 
is very certain from the nature of the charges brought 
against the Savior at the different tribunals where he 
was successively brought to trial. These charges were 
varied to suit circumstances, and therefore could not have 
been honest. In this case, he was before the Jewish 
priests, and the accusation brought against him w r as, 
irreverence in speaking of what their religion taught 
them to hold sacred; — they called it blasphemy.. This 
charge they attempted to prove from some expressions, 
perfectly innocent in the sense in which he had used 
them, and almost perfectly so, even with the meaning 
which they pretended to attach to them. They found it 
difficult to establish their charges by any witnesses they 
could procure, but they were soon satisfied in another 
way. When he began to talk about himself, he uttered 
what they called blasphemy, enough to convince them 
fully; and the High Priest rent his clothes with affected 
horror. They spent some time in gratifying their re- 
sentment and hatred, by insulting and tormenting their 



238 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 8. 

Political condition of the Jews. Capital punishment. 

victim in every possible way. He had pretended to be 
a prophet, and they accordingly blindfolded him, and 
then beat him, asking him to prophesy who it was that 
struck the blow. Jesus suffered it all in silence. 

The conclusion of their deliberation, if such treatment 
of a helpless prisoner could be called deliberation, was, 
that he ought to die. But in the way of his death there 
was a very formidable difficulty, which must be particu- 
larly described. 

Judea was, at this time, a Roman province. It had 
been conquered by the armies of the empire some years 
before, and was accordingly now, under Roman govern- 
ment. Now the policy which the Romans seem to have 
pursued, in maintaining their power over the coun- 
tries which they subdued, was to leave the inhabitants 
as much as possible to their own customs and laws, in- 
terfering only in those great and important subjects 
which could not safely be left to the vanquished people. 
The command of all the forts, and of all the soldiers, 
they of course assumed themselves. They took the 
direction of all the important public measures, and they 
reserved, too, a control over the higher criminal cases 
which might occur in the administration of justice. In- 
ferior punishment, the Jews might inflict, themselves, 
but they were not permitted to take life in retribution f»r 
crime, without the permission of their conquerors. Of 
course, then, there was no way by which they could pro- 
cure the execution of Jesus, but by carrying him to the 
Roman government, and obtaining the sentence of death 
there. 

But how could they do this? Their charge against 
him was blasphemy, and what would a Roman officer 
care about blasphemy. The governor was compara- 
tively a stranger there, having been in possession of 
the government only six or eight years. He was a 
Roman, not a Jew; he took consequently little interest 



Ch. 8.] 


THE CRUCIFIERS. 239 


The Roman governor. 


His hall. The Priests remain in the street. 



in Jewish feelings, and felt no reverence for what the 
Jews held sacred. How to get a sentence of death 
confirmed by such a man, against a criminal charged 
with such a crime as blasphemy, was the question. 

It could not be done. They knew it could not be done; 
for a Roman officer, as the event in this case showed, 
could understand the claims of justice, when his own 
interest or ambition did not interfere with them. If they 
go to Pilate therefore with their persecuted prisoner, 
they must have some more plausible pretext than the 
story of the blasphemy. 

By this time, their number had probably much increas- 
ed; and when the hour arrived, at which they could 
obtain admission at the Roman hall, they bound then- 
prisoner again, and led him forth into the street. Attend- 
ed and followed by a throng of his enemies, the Savior 
walked quietly on, until he arrived in front of the palace 
occupied by the Roman. They sent Jesus in, remaining 
outside in the street themselves, — lest they should be de- 
filed! What perfectly good friends are superstition and 
sin, and with how little interference will they share the 
dominion of the heart. Here is a savage crowd, tyrannis- 
ing over a defenceless and helpless man, in the extreme 
of injustice and cruelty; their blood is boiling with angry 
passions, and no obstacles or difficulties are sufficient to 
restrain them in their eagerness to secure the destruc- 
tion of their victim; — and yet, thus excited, thus in- 
flamed, and thus destitute of all moral principle, they 
stop at once, when they come to the doors of a Roman 
building, and will not enter it, for fear that they shall be 
defiled I 

The Roman was a pagan, and his apartments were 
forbidden ground to them. The strictness of their law 
had prohibited even so slight a connexion as this, with 
idolatry; especially when they were about to celebrate 
any of the more solemn ordinances of the law. The 



240 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 8. 

Another apparent discrepancy. Truth and fabrication. 

passover was at hand, and they must eat it. They could 
insult and torture an innocent victim, but they must not 
omit to eat the paschal lamb ! They could stand burning 
with malice and rage in a Jewish street; but to cross the 
threshold of a pagan dwelling, — would never do. Every 
man there probably prided himself on his scruples, — his 
inflexible precision in obeying the law; but thought 
nothing of the loathsome and terrible corruption which 
had full possession of his heart. Whited sepulchres; 
the Savior had called them: What an exact comparison! 
They were particularly scrupulous at this time, on 
account of the approaching passover, as the narrative 
informs us; but the same narrative states that the pass- 
over had been celebrated the evening before; for it was 
to keep this feast that Jesus and his disciples had met 
Dn the preceding evening. The apparent discrepancy is 
another of those marks of genuineness, which no skill 
can ever counterfeit. The occurrences of real life con- 
stitute a most complicated web, where a thousand actors, 
and a thousand events mingle and intertwine in the most 
intricate confusion. All is however, in fact, consistent, 
though no one eye can take in the whole. Through this 
congeries, truth takes its bold and unhesitating way, con- 
fident that it cannot find at any one point, any thing 
which is really inconsistent with what it is to meet with 
at another, and therefore it speaks freely of what it sees, 
and boldly exhibits every object which may lie in its 
track. It runs of course into apparent difficulties. It 
leaves interruptions and chasms, which additional light 
must correct and explain, and it is only when that ad- 
ditional light is fully furnished that we see, in all its 
perfection, the consistency and harmony of the whole. 
Fabrication cannot take such a course. She must make 
things consistent and plain, as she goes on; or if she 
leaves an apparent difficulty, there must be an explana- 
tion at hand. 



Ch. 8.] 


THE CRUCIFIERS. 241 


Explanation. 


Judas and the Priests compared. 



The researches of scholars have reconciled this ap- 
parent disagreement; in fact there are several consid- 
erations, each of which is sufficient to account for the 
language used. Perhaps the most important is, that 
there was a dispute at that time in regard to the day on 
which the passover should be kept; — some, relying sim- 
ply on the declarations of scripture, celebrated it on one 
evening, and the priests and pharisees, following certain 
traditions, preferred the next. It is not necessary how- 
ever, for our purpose, to dwell on this subject here. 

The character exhibited by these priests is the second 
great variety which this whole transaction brings to view. 
Enmity to the Savior appears in them in very different 
forms from that which it assumed in Judas. • His ruling 
passion was love of money, — theirfe v.was love .ef-'-p lace 
and power. They were priests; all their esty.mgti.on in 
society, and all the virtue, on which they so confidently 
prided themselves, depended on*fche ceremonies of the 
Jewish law. Undermine these, and call public attention 
from ceremonial exactness to internal purity, and such 
an influence 'and swch characters as theirs would be 
ruined. Jesus Christ had be,en doing this most effectu- 
ally, and all their spiritual pride, ambition, and every 
worldly feeling was roused. 

There is a great difference also between the actual 
appearances which were exhibited in the two cases. 
Judas was calm, the priests were furious. Judas endan- 
gered his master's life by cool, calculating treachery; 
the priests were loud and boisterous and urgent, in 
effecting his destruction. The former was the accessory, 
assisting others in what he never would have under- 
taken himself. The latter were the principals, originating 
every plan, and pressing it forward with the most open 
and determined energy. 

The reason for this difference is, that the principles 
21 



242 THE CORXER-STOXE. [Cll. 8 

The spirit of the Priests. Contention among denominations. 

which Jesus Christ was publishing, came at once to 
inevitable and direct collision with the ambitious views 
and feelings of the priests, while they were not thus 
aggressive in respect to the avarice of Judas. The 
Savior's principles did indeed as plainly forbid the avarice, 
but his acts did not come so directly in the way of its 
gratification. Judas was left to pursue uninterrupted his 
own plans, but the hollow hypocrisy of the Jews was not 
thus left. Every public address made by the Savior, 
was most directly undermining it. Judas therefore, re- 
mained quiet and undisturbed, while the priests were 
goaded on to fury. The ruling passion was gently drawn 
out of its retreat, in the former case, allured by the op- 
portunity of gratifying itself by the ruin of its victim; in 
the latter, it was boldly assaulted in its den, and the con- 
test was, of course, a desperate struggle for existence. 

The spirit of the high priests reigns still in the world, — 
in many a heart which puts the splendor of forms, or the 
stability of an ecclesiasjical organization, in place of the 
progress of pure, heartfelt piety. Many a pastor would 
prefer having a man in his congregation, rather than in 
another's church, and will really regret the progress of 
religion, if he sees its current flowing out of his own 
communion. How many times have professed friends 
of God stopped suddenly the progress of his cause, by 
contending about, a division of the fruits of its success. 
They think they are punctilious for the order and regu- 
larity of the church. So did Caiaphas. They sacrifice 
the interests of the soul, for the sake of scrupulous ad- 
herence to what they deem the letter of the law. This 
was exactly the sin of the Priests and Pharisees. The 
law of God, and attachment to his prescribed ordinances, 
is their pretended motive, while love of personal influence 
or denominational ascendency is the real one. So it was 
with these crucifiers of the Savior. There may be a 
great difference in the degree in which those feelings 



Ch 8. j THE CRUCIFIERS. 243 

Peter. His appearance at the hall. Character of Peter and John. 

are exhibited, but let those who cherish them, study the 
case, and see if they can find any difference in kind. 
We can find none. Whoever puts his rank and sta- 
tion, and the interests of that division of the church to 
which he belongs, on which perhaps his rank and station 
depend, in competition with the progress of real, heart- 
felt, genuine piety in the world, will find, if he is honest, 
that the spirit of the Jewish Sanhedrim is precisely his. 

But now comes a new character still, upon this ever 
varying stage. At the doo,r of the hall where this trial is 
going on, stands a man who is watching, with eager in- 
terest, every thing which takes place. He seems to be a 
stranger. He tries to affect unconcern, but he plainly, is 
not one of the common bystanders there. Presently 
some one comes down to the door and procures admis- 
sion for him, and he takes his place by the fire with the 
others who are waiting to see the end. He is accused 
several times, by persons who notice his appearance, of 
being one of the friends of the prisoner, but he is afraid 
to admit it. An hour ago he drew his sword in his master's 
defence, — now he dares not admit that he knows him. 
Perhaps he was afraid that Malchus would remember, 
against him, his wounded ear. He had in fact more 
reason to fear, than any other disciple; and, as human 
nature is, it is not surprising that he should be overcome 
by the greatness of the danger. 

If this scene were fiction, one of its highest beauties 
would be the contrasts of character between Peter and 
John. A superficial observer, drawing from imagina- 
tion, would have made Peter, in all respects, bold and 
undaunted; and in exhibiting John as mild and gentle, 
would have made him timid and yielding. But history 
in this case, as she is recording facts, is true to nature, 
and while she gives to Peter physical boldness and con- 
stitutional ardor, she gives the calm, steady, lofty moral 
courage to the gentle John At midnight, among Ian- 



244 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 8 

Peter's sin very common. His temptations compared with ours. 

terns and torches and weapons and an armed band, 
Peter rushes on with his sword; but when the hour of 
physical excitement has passed, he turns pale at the 
question of a maid-servant, and denies his Lord. John 
has no resistance to offer to a soldier; but amidst all his 
master's dangers, he keeps close to his side, his known 
and acknowledged friend; attending him faithfully on his 
trial, and doing all he can by his presence and sympa- 
thy to soothe his last moments upon the cross. 

Reader, if you had been in Peter's case should you 
have denied your Master as he did? Were this question 
to be proposed to any assembly of Christians, and if an 
answer was to be immediately given, according to the 
spontaneous feelings of the heart, it would be perhaps 
one universal negative. You think that you yourself 
would certainly never have committed so great a sin; and 
still it is not at all improbable that you are cherishing a 
secret hope that your sins are forgiven, and are yet con- 
cealing it from others. You hope you are the Savior's 
friend, but you are afraid or ashamed to have it known. 
You wish to make secret peace; and are unwilling to 
repair openly, the injury which you have openly done. 

Still, you will say perhaps, that, though this may be 
wrong, there is a great difference between such a con- 
cealment, and repeatedly and plainly denying the Savior 
in express assertions. 

True. And so there is a great difference between 
the degree of danger which leads you to deny your 
master, and that which overwhelmed Peter. You are 
afraid of a taunt, or of some harmless sarcasm; scourg- 
ing and crucifixion threatened him. You are afraid of 
the looks and words of a few of your own companions; 
he quailed before weapons of torture and death, in the 
hands of a ferocious soldiery; if you consider, therefore, 
the difference between the modes by which your prac- 
tical denial of Christ, and his, are exhibited, you must 



Ch. 8.] THE CRUCIFIERS. 245 

Denying Christ at the present day. The narrative resumed. 

also consider the difference in the strength of the tempt- 
ation by which you are respectively overcome. The sin 
is the same in its nature in both cases, and though yours 
is less conspicuous, it may be even more aggravated than 
his. 

The sin of Peter, is, in all its essential characteristics, 
very often committed by those who profess to abhor it. 
Brought as we are, in such a world as this, into per- 
petual connexion with the influences of sin, we are very 
often thrown into circumstances where we think it most 
prudent, for a time, to conceal the flag under which we 
profess to sail. There is no great danger which we 
dread; but when we come into scenes where Jesus 
Christ is not honored, and where his principles are in 
disrepute, we quietly conceal our attachment to him, 
and while we perhaps say nothing that is false, we allow 
ourselves to pass for worldly men, by speaking in their 
tone, and displaying, so far as we can, their spirit. We 
are ashamed or afraid to avow our principles, and, 
consequently, we stand substantially where Peter did. 
There is in fact no essential difference between his case 
and ours. The circumstances are altered, but the spirit 
is the same. 

But we must go on with our story. The Jews, too 
punctilious to go themselves into the judgment hall, wait- 
ed in the street and sent their prisoner in. The conver- 
sation which ensued is one of the most striking examples 
which the Bible contains; — every incident being so 
true to nature, and every word so exactly in keeping 
with the character and circumstances of the individual 
who utters it. It was substantially as follows. While 
reviewing it, however, we must keep in mind the strongly 
marked characteristics of the three great parties in the 
transaction. Jesus the victim, patient, quiet and sub- 
missive, ready to bear and to suffer every thing; sileni 
21* 



246 THE CORNER-STONE. [Oil. 8, 

Characters of the parties. The dialogue in the street. 

under mere taunts, but ready to explain, when any one 
shall honestly ask for explanation. The crowd in the 
street, eager for his destruction, but without power to 
effect it unless they can obtain permission from the gov- 
ernor, before whose palace they have assembled; and 
the governor himself, caring nothing about the Jews or 
their pretended criminal; but unwilling either to put an 
innocent man to death, or to displease the people under 
his command, and standing especially in awe of any- 
thing which might hazard his political character in the 
estimation of the emperor at Rome. Agitated and dis- 
tracted by the contradictory impulses of these feelings, 
he vacillates and wavers, and tries every way to escape 
the responsibility of a decision. 

" What accusation do you bring against this man," 
was the first and most natural question. Pilate came 
out to ask it of those who had assembled at the door. 

They answered that he was a malefactor. Perhaps 
they had not decided upon the precise charge which they 
should bring against him. 

" Very well," was the reply, " take him and judge him 
according to your law." 

il He deserves death, and that, it is not lawful for us 
to inflict," they replied. "We have therefore brought 
him to you." 

A conversation now ensued, in which they brought out 
their charge, adapted to the feelings of the new judge. 
The old accusation was blasphemy. Now it is treason. 
Treason against the Roman government. This, too, 
when every Jew, from Galilee to Gaza, abhorred the 
Roman yoke, and would have almost deified any one 
who would have raised successfully the standard of rebel- 
lion. Every Roman tax-gatherer was hated, and every 
mark of their political subjection was odious in the ex- 
treme; and they had themselves actually tried in vain 
to lead Jesus to say something against the Roman 



Ch. 8.] THE CRUCIFIERS. 247 

Charge of treason. Pilate and the Savior in the hall. 

government, supposing that he would not dare to brave 
public opinion so far as to speak in its favor. In the 
face of all this, they come, heartless pretenders to an 
allegiance which they did not feel, to denounce hirn to 
their common enemy, for what they would, every man 
of them, have been glad to have had done. It was the 
basest of all charges ever brought against the victim of 
any oppression. They accuse him, before their common 
enemy, of being their own friend: for treason against 
Caesar, would have been political attachment to them ; so 
that if he had uttered sentiments hostile to the powerful 
foe, which had brought one common oppression over the 
land of their fathers, it would have been base treachery 
for them to have disclosed it. 

But he had not. They took some of his metaphorical 
expressions, and perverted them to a meaning which they 
were never intended to convey; and endeavored from 
these to maintain their charge of treason against Caesar. 

The charge was well calculated to produce some effect. 
It evidently arrested the attention of the Roman, and he 
went into the hall, where Jesus stood waiting, to ask for 
his defence. 

The manner in which he accosted him seems to imply 
that Pilate thought it probable that his prisoner was some 
insane or at least eccentric man, against whom his coun- 
trymen had been for some reason exasperated; for he 
does not put the charge of treason to him as an accusa- 
tion against which he wished to hear his defence; " Art 
thou the king of the Jews? " said he; as if his object 
was, to put him off his guard, by saying nothing which 
implied reproach, but only endeavoring to draw him into 
conversation. 

"Do you ask the question of your own accord?" was 
the Savior's reply, (We give the conversation in sub- 
stance only,) " or is that the charge which they bring 
against me." 



248 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 8. 

Pilate's efforts. His inquiries. His pkn for avoiding a decision. 

" Am I a Jew? " was the rejoinder. " What interest 
should I take in the affairs of your people? Your own 
countrymen have brought you here to me, as a criminal: 
what is it that you have done? " 

" They accuse me then of trying to be a king. I have 
spoken sometimes of a kingdom, but it is not of this 
world. It is perfectly plain that I have aimed at no 
political power; If I had, I should never have yielded 
up myself to my enemies without a struggle. My friends 
would have fought for me if this had been the nature of 
my aim. No: the kingdom I have spoken of is not of 
this world." 

" Are you a king then, in any sense? " 

"Yes, I am. I came into the world to found a new 
moral kingdom here, by bearing witness to the truth." 

"What is your truth?" asked the Roman; but ap- 
parently not waiting for a reply, he went out to the door 
again, and told the multitude there, that he found no 
fault in the man. He probably supposed that he was 
some ignorant and deluded, but harmless, enthusiast, 
whose case deserved no serious notice. 

The priests, however, renewed their charges. They 
assured the governor that their prisoner was really a 
dangerous man, that he had been exciting sedition, and 
teaching the people treason against the Roman govern- 
ment, all over the land, from Galilee to Jerusalem. 

The word Galilee suggested to the perplexed Roman a 
new way of extricating himself from the difficulty, for it 
was fast becoming quite a serious difficulty to him. His 
sense of justice would not allow him to condemn the man, 
but he could not resist the clamor which demanded his 
death. The word Galilee reminded him that he might 
throw off the responsibility of the decision upon Herod, 
who had jurisdiction over that province, and who was, 
at this time, accidentally at Jerusalem. He sent him 
♦herefore to Herod, his accusers following in the train. 



Ch. 8.] THE CRUCIFIERS. 249 

Herod. The Savior's silence. Another plan. 

Herod was glad to see them come, when he heard who 
it was they were bringing. He did not wish, like Pilate, 
honestly to examine the case, but hoped for amusement 
from his prisoner. Jesus perceived it at once; and 
though he frankly explained to Pilate his character and 
plans, to Herod's questions of curiosity and insult, he 
deigned no reply. The Priests and scribes accused 
him vehemently, but he was silent. They clothed him 
in a gorgeous robe, in ridicule of his supposed preten- 
sions, and then sent him back to Pilate. 

Under these circumstances, the Procurator was much 
perplexed to know what to do. Duty was on the one 
side, and strong inducement to do wrong on the other, 
and he wavered, and hesitated, and resisted, and inclined 
now to this side, and now to that, just as the human mind 
so often does, in circumstances substantially the same. 
Millions of men, who struggle ineffectually with tempta- 
tion to do acknowledged wrong, may see their own story 
told, and almost their own hearts reflected in this scene. 

His first plan was, to compromise the difficulty. 

"You have brought me this man," said he, " as one 
that is exciting the people against my government. I 
have examined him, here before you. and cannot find 
any evidence of his guilt. I have sent him to Herod 
too, and he finds no more evidence than I. Now I am 
willing to inflict some moderate punishment upon him, 
but he has done nothing worthy of death." 

This of course did not satisfy them. They were de- 
termined, if the most urgent demands on their part could 
prevent it, that he should not escape so. 

Pilate then thought of another plan. It had been 
customary for him at their great festival, to release some 
public criminal as a favor to them. In a conquered 
country, the interests of the government are generally 
regarded as so distinct from those of the people, that even 
the punishment of criminals, especially those guilty of 



250 


THE C0RNER-ST0XE. 


[Ch. 8. 


Barabbas called for. 


The excitement. 


Pilate's perplexity. 



political crimes, is regarded as in some sense, an injury 
to the community. A foreign power comes and estab- 
lishes itself over them, and it is not surprising that even 
wholesome control should be unpopular, and that the 
pardon of a state criminal should be regarded as a boon 
from the authorities, — a suitable contribution from the 
government, to the means of rejoicing at a great public 
festival. 

The Roman proposed, then, since they insisted that 
Jesus should be condemned to die, to consider him as 
thus condemned, and then to pardon him, as it was usual 
to pardon one on the occasion which had now arrived. 
He might have known that this would not succeed. 
The crowd were all ready with their reply. "Release 
Barabbas;" "Pardon Barabbas;" "Barabbas," came 
up from a hundred voices. 

" What shall I do then with this Jesus." 

" Crucify him;" " Crucify him." 

" Why, what evil hath he done? He is not guilty." 

"Crucify him;" "Crucify him;" was the universal 
reply. 

The perplexed and distressed Procurator seems 
scarcely to have known what to do. The crowd must, 
by this time, have become very great, and was probably 
every moment increasing. Passions were rising, — 
violent gesticulations, and ferocious looks, spoke the 
intense excitement which prevailed, — and he must have 
seen that there was the most imminent danger of a riot, 
perhaps an insurrection, which would involve him in 
lasting difficulty, or might even ruin for ever his political 
hopes. He could allay the whole by giving up the de- 
fenceless and innocent object of their fury. But when 
he looked upon him, patient, mild, submissive, waiting 
in silence to learn what was to be his fate, he could not 
do it. He was a Roman, and he knew his duty. 

It was very plain, however, from the course he had 



Ph. 8.] 


THE CRUCIFIERS. 251 


The scourging. 


One more appeal to the Savior's enemies. 



taken thus far, what would be the ultimate decision. 
He began to yield at first, and when a man proposes 
terms with sin of any kind, it is not difficult to foresee 
which will conquer. Pilate concluded to go one step 
farther; to scourge the prisoner, in hopes, perhaps, that 
when they came to witness his sufferings under the lash, 
their hearts would relent, or at least that their anger 
would be satisfied. He gave him up to the soldiers 
therefore, and ordered him to be scourged. 

Scourging! How few of those who have read this 
story have any idea what a military scourging is. I 
might give a description from the narratives of witnesses, 
for the horrid suffering is still inflicted as a supposed 
essential part of military discipline. But it must not be 
done; I could not introduce to my readers, by distinct 
description, a hardy soldier, writhing and shrieking 
under such an infliction, without passing those limits in 
the detail of physical suffering, beyond which, such a 
work as this ought not to go. How Jesus bore it, we 
are not told. Pilate hoped it would satisfy his murder- 
ers. It would have satisfied any common murderers. 

The scourging finished, — the bleeding sufferer was 
retained some time, by the soldiers, for their amusement. 
A larger number, perhaps nearly the whole garrison of 
Fort Antonia, were called to enjoy the sport. They 
crowned him with thorns, and gave him a reed for a 
sceptre, and then with the gorgeous robe which Herod 
had found for him, they held him up as an object of uni- 
versal derision. 

Pilate at length came forth again, to make a last 
effort to save the prisoner. 

" Here," said he, " I have brought him forth again, 
to tell you once more, that he is not guilty. Behold the 
man," said he, as he pointed to the prisoner, covered 
with marks of the sufferings and indignities he had borne. 
The reed was in his hands, the purple robe around him, 



252 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 8. 

The decision. Character of Pontius Pilate. 

and the thorns were in his bleeding temples. No won- 
der Pilate thought his enemies would have been moved. 

"Crucify him," "Crucify him;" was the universal 
reply. 

" You must take him then and crucify him yourselves, 
for I cannot find any fault in him. He has not been 
guilty of treason." 

But why go on to detail the faltering, failing efforts, 
which the Roman officer made to save his prisoner. He 
had begun to yield, and though he continued to dispute 
the ground, at every step he gave way more and more, 
until, finding that riot and tumult were inevitable^ and 
when it was pretty distinctly intimated that he might be 
denounced at Rome, as a traitor himself, if he allowed 
this supposed traitor to go free, he finally yielded. Be- 
fore giving, however, the orders for his crucifixion, he 
came out before the multitude, and in the most solemn 
manner assured them, that the man was innocent, and 
that if they crucified him, they must answer for his 
blood. 

" His blood be on us, and on our children;" was the 
awful reply. 

Very few men ever think of comparing themselves 
with Pontius Pilate, or with the soldiers who executed 
his orders; when perhaps there are not any where in the 
Bible, delineations of character which might be more 
universally appropriated than these. Neither of them 
had any special hatred for the Savior. Pilate would 
have done his duty if he could have done it by any com- 
mon sacrifice; but like multitudes, probably, who will 
read this examination of his character, he was not willing 
to make the sacrifice which was necessary, in taking 
the right side. The reader fluctuates, perhaps, just as 
he did, between conscience and temptation, yielding 
more and more to sin, and finding the struggle more 



Ch. 8.) 


THE URUC1FIERS 253 


The soldiers. 


Sinning in the way of business. 



hopeless the longer it is continued. A religious book, 
an afflietive or a warning providence, or an hour of soli- 
tude, quickens conscience, and renews the combat; but 
the world comes in with its clamors, and, after a feeble 
resistance, he gives way again, — Pilate exactly, in every 
thing but the mere form in which the question of duty 
comes before him. 

And the Roman soldiers too; they would have said 
if they had been charged with doingf wrong, that they 
were soldiers, and must do as they were ordered. They 
executed Christ as they would have executed any other 
man at tneir centurion's command. Such work was 
their business, and the part they performed in the sad 
tragedy was, as the phrase is at the present day, in the 
way of business ; tliey felt, probably, no responsibility. 
The excuse was, to say the least, as good then as it is 
now, and it will be allowed as much weight at the judg- 
ment day, in the case of the ignorant and degraded sol- 
dier, as in that of the enlightened and cultivated member 
of a christian community. In other words, it is no excuse 
for either. The bookseller who has circulated a perni- 
cious book, the lawyer who has fomented the quarrels 
which he ought to have healed, the merchant who has 
distributed over the community the temptations to vice 
or the means of gratifying un»holy passions, and the 
soldiers who insulted and tortured their victim in obedi- 
ence to their commanders, will all find at last, that the 
customs or regulations of business among men, will 
never justify doing what conscience declares to be wrong. 

Such is the marked and striking variety of character 
which is exhibited in this extraordinary scene. We 
have the soldiers and the bystanders, like the mass of 
mankind, unconcerned and reckless, caring little about 
right and wrong, and controlled in their conduct by the 
accidental influence of circumstances, — neither fearing 
22 



£54 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 8 

Various characters exhibited at the cross. His numerous friends 

God, nor regarding duty ; and we have Pilate, doubt- 
ing and hesitating in the struggle against sin, — -con- 
science awake, and yet temptation powerful, and the 
contest ending, as such contests usually do, in the victo- 
ry of sin. They are fair examples of the two great forms 
of open wickedness; hardened reprobates sinning without 
compunction, and the wavering and miserable soul doing 
wrong in spite of it. It is hard to tell which God re- 
gards as most guilty. We have hypocrisy, also, in its 
two leading forms; Judas a hypocrite for money, and the 
Priests, hypocrites for place and power. To complete 
the collection, we have piety in its two leading forms; 
the wandering, sinning, and broken-hearted Peter; and* 
Mary and John, firm in their duty, and unwavering in 
their affection, -to the last; sharing the opprobrium and 
the danger of their Master, and keeping closely at. his 
side; giving him all that human sympathy can give, and 
receiving his dying charge. 

It is a very common impression that the populace, 
generally, were against the Savior, at this time; but the 
narrative does not seem to countenance this idea. The 
Priests were against him, and they seem to have been 
the chief, if not the only agents. They contrived their 
plans secretly, in order to get him apprehended, and to 
procure sentence against him, by the Roman governor, 
before there should be any opportunity for a rescue by 
the people; after this, they knew he would be secure; 
and now when he was led away, under Roman authority, 
to execution, they seem not to have feared any inter- 
ruption. A great company of friends did, however, fol- 
ow him, lamenting his cruel fate. He once turned to 
address them on his way, asking them to weep not for 
him, but for themselves and their children. 

They came to the place of execution, and painful as it 
is, we must dwell a few moments upon the scene that 



Ch. 8.] THE CRUCIFIERS 255 

Crucifixion. Inflammation. Thirst. lering. 

was presented there. He was to be crucified; and cru- 
cifixion is perhaps the most ingenious and the most per- 
fect invention for mingling torture and death which was 
ever contrived. It is the very masterpiece of cruelty. 
Life is to be destroyed; but in this way of destroying it, 
it is arranged with savage ingenuity that no vital part 
shall be touched: the torturer goes to the very extremi- 
ties, — to the hands and to the feet, and fixes his rough 
and rusty iron among the nerves and tendons there; 
and the poor sufferer hangs in a position which admits 
of no change and no rest, until burning and torturing 
inflammation can work its way slowly to the seat of life, 
and extinguish it by the simple power of suffering. 

They laid the Savior down upon the cross, and extend- 
ed his arms; a soldier on each side, holds the hand down 
in its assigned position, and then presses the point of his 
iron spike upon the proper place in the palm. He rais- 
es his hammer, — the patient sufferer waiting calmly for 
the blow; — 

But we must stop; — we are going beyond those lim- 
its in the detail of physical suffering, which we have said 
a writer in such a work as this, should not pass over. 
We leave the rest, and the reader must conceive if he 
can, of the first sharp piercing agony, and the excruci- 
ating pains then shooting through the frame; — the ris- 
ing inflammation, and the intolerable thirst, which goads 
a wounded man almost to desperation, and brings up 
from a field of battle, a few hours after the contest, one 
universal cry for water, from the thousands who lie 
wounded and dying. As the Savior hangs, too, by such 
a suspension, hour after hour, we must remember that 
he had been scourged. Perhaps this was in mercy, how- 
ever. He died sooner than the malefactors. 

But it is too awful a scene to dwell upon. We may 
read the narrative in the gospels, without much feeling, 
because we have long been familiar with the words, 



256 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 8. 



Death. The soldiers' visit at sunset. The body taken down. 

and they cease to affect us. But if the imagination re- 
ally enters into the scene, she recoils, awed and terrified 
with the contemplation of such sufferings. Very few 
men would have nerve enough to witness what the Re- 
deemer was willing to endure. 

Life was slow in relinquishing its hold, attacked thus, 
as it was, in the remote extremities. It sunk at last, how- 
ever, under the power of protracted pain. The sufferer 
ceased to speak; his head dropped upon his breast; and 
as they looked up to his face from below, the rigid fixed- 
ness of feature, and the half closed and glassy eye told 
them that all was over. 

In crucifixion, ingenious and savage cruelty maintains 
her ground to the very last; for when the executioner 
gets tired of waiting for the miserable sufferer to die, 
and time compels him to do something to accelerate the 
work, he has not the mercy to destroy the sad remnant 
of vitality at a blow. He keeps, still, as far as possible 
away from the seat of life, and by new violence inflicted 
on the limbs, endeavors simply to send a new pang, as a 
reinforcement to the assailant, in the protracted contest 
between life and suffering. It is the very object and 
aim of crucifixion to kill by pain, and with savage con- 
sistency they will employ no other agent to speed the 
work. Accordingly when, at sunset, the soldiers came 
to the place of execution to see how the fatal process 
was going on, they broke the malefactors' legs tc quicken 
their dying struggles 

" He is dead already," said they, when they came to 
the Savior's cross, and looked at the body hanging pas- 
sive and lifeless upon it, and one of them thrust his long 
iron-pointed spear up into his side, to prove that there 
was no sense or feeling there. 

The ferocious executioners then went away and left 
the disciples to take the body gently down, and bear ft 



Ch. 8.] 


THE CRUCIFIERS. 257 


The disciples. 


Moral effect of the scene- 



away to the tomb. As they carried it to what they sup- 
posed would be its long home, the limbs hung relaxed 
and passive; the tongue, to whose words of kindness and 
instruction they had so often listened, was silent; the 
eye fixed, — the cheek pale, — the hand cold. The sol- 
diers had done their work effectually; and though the 
disciples could not have noticed these proofs that their 
Master had really gone, without tears, they must still 
have rejoiced that the poor sufferer's agonies were over. 
As to themselves, all their hopes were blasted, and all 
their plans destroyed. They had firmly believed that 
their Master was to have been the Savior of his nation; 
instead of that, he had been himself destroyed. The day 
before, every thing had looked bright and promising in 
their prospects; but this sudden storm had come on, and 
in twenty-four hours, it had swept every thing away. 
They placed the body in the tomb, and, disappointed, 
broken-hearted, and overwhelmed with sorrow, they 
went to their homes. They knew nothing about the 
design and nature of these sufferings, — and we know, 
after all, but little; but who can be so insensible as not 
to see, that this transaction, exhibiting on so conspicuous 
a stage all the forms and degrees both of holiness and 
sin, and especially when seen in the light in which the 
sacred writers subsequently exhibited it, goes very far 
towards making the same moral impression, as would be 
made by the just punishment of sin. Who can read the 
story, without loving purity and holiness, and abhorring 
and dreading guilt. 

22* 



258 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 9. 

Plan of the work. Human life. Anticipated happiness. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE PARTING COMMAND, 

OR THE MEANS OF SPREADING THE GOSPEL. 

u Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." 

Were we to follow inclination, we should not pass 
over those most interesting events, which occurred during 
the interval between the Savior's death and ascension. 
But it is not the design of this work, as the reader will 
have already perceived, to give a connected and contin- 
uous history of Jesus Christ, but to bring forward the 
leading principles of religious truth, as they are naturally 
connected with the various points of this history. Fi- 
delity to our plan therefore seems to require, that after 
having considered the sufferings which our Savior 
endured for us, we should pass on to the consideration 
of the great work which he wishes us now to do for him 
He assigned this work to his disciples by his last words 

The objects and the pursuits of human life are entirely 
changed, by the view which the gospel- takes of the hu- 
man condition and character. Without the light which 
Christianity sheds upon it, it is a dull and wearisome 
path, a routine of tiresome duties, or heartless pleasures. 
Every one will admit that it has been so with him, in 
respect to the past, though his futuie way seems gilded 
with new promises of enjoyment. These however will 
certainly fade away when he approaches them, as all the 
rest have done. 

The mass of mankind, never see this. They know, 
it is true, that they have never been contented and hap- 
py, and are not now; but just before them, in the voyage 
of life, they see a bright spot upon the waters, which 
they expect soon to reach, and where their bark will 



Ch. 


9.] 




THE 


PARTING 


COMMAND. 






259 


What have I 


to 


live for 




The 


work of a 


Chr 


istian. 



float, they think, in a golden sea of light and glory. 
That spot has been just so far before them, and has 
looked just as bright and alluring for years, — and as 
they have approached it, the splendid reflection has fled, 
and the waters have returned to darkness and gloom, 
before the keel of their bark could plough them. Still 
they have not discovered this illusion, but they give 
themselves up to its influence, with their whole souls, and 
press forward as eagerly to the spot of imagined happi- 
ness, as if it had just this moment burst upon their view. 

The more thinking and serious, however, see this, 
and feel it deeply. It seems to them discouraging to 
toil on in duties, which return every day the same, and 
the performance of which leaves behind no permanent 
effects; or to seek for pleasures, which the experience 
of years has proved can seldom be attained, and which, 
when they are attained, do not satisfy. These feelings 
have oppressed many a sensitive and reflecting spirit, 
as it has looked forward to the years of life that remain, 
and thought how soon they would be gone, and has 
asked with a desponding sigh, " What have I to live 
for?" 

The true followers of Jesus Christ are raised at once 
above the vacuity and inanity which characterize a life 
spent without God. Their Master did not leave the 
world, without giving them something to do. Something, 
at once pleasant, and useful, and ennobling. It is pleas- 
ant, because it interests all the feelings of the heart, 
and carries the soul on to peaceful, but rich enjoyments, 
of the very highest character. It is useful; it seeks di- 
rectly the highest good, aiming at happiness present and 
future, and attaching its own proper share of importance 
to every means of attaining it. It is ennobling; for it 
sinks all the base passions of selfishness and sin, it breaks 
over the barriers and limits of time and sense, and ex- 
pands the views and widens the field of effort and by 



260 THE CORNER-STONE [Ch. 9 

The Christian's work. Means of doing it. I. Holy life. 

linking man with God, in one great and common enter- 
prise, it raises him almost out of the sphere of human 
action, and gives him an employment eternal in duration, 
and unbounded in the wide-spread extension of its aims. 

The work which Christ has given us to do, is the pro- 
motion of his kingdom here, and it is the work of all. 
If there is anything clearly asserted in the New Tes- 
tament, it is that the followers of the Savior are not their 
own, but his; that they are bought with a price, and 
are bound to be devoted to their Maker's service. The 
great work too, which, in his service, they are called 
upon to perform, is establishing and spreading the reign 
of holiness in this world: and it is of such fundamental 
importance that every Christian should understand clear- 
ly his duty in this respect, that a chapter ought to be 
devoted to it; and as it is a subject which relates exclu- 
sively to personal duty, I shall adopt the form of direct 
address to my reader. 

When^ou give yourself up to the service of Jesus 
Christ, then, consider how much is meant by it. It in- 
volves, among other things which have already been 
considered, devoting yourself to his work. To bring 
men to repentance and holiness was the work of his life; 
if you follow him, then, it must be yours. This point, 
however, was considered more fully, in a preceding 
chapter. Our object is now, not to enforce the duty, 
but to show rather, by what means it is to be performed. 
These we shall consider in order. 

I. A HOLY LIFE. 

The most direct and powerful means of promoting the 
Savior's kingdom, is the vigorous cultivation of your own 
growth in grace. There is a great tendency among 
Christians, to look too much away from themselves, and 
think that they are to do good to their fellow men, by 
bustling efforts, bearing directly upon them, without the 



Ch. 9.] THE PARTING COMMAND 261 

Two kinds of influence. The salt of the earth. 

light of a high and consistent, and unsullied example of 
holiness. " Ye are the salt of the earth," said our Savior, 
and the very expressive metaphor seems to imply that 
Christianity is to influence mankind, not so much by its 
outward and open triumphs in the world, as by the silent 
and unseen, and yet most powerful operation of its prin- 
ciples, in the hearts and lives of its professors. The 
thousands of individual Christians are surrounded, each 
in his own little sphere, with some, upon whom they 
exert a constant influence. The aggregate of this in- 
fluence, is immense. Each individual, however, is re- 
sponsible only for his own comparatively minute and 
separate share; but success in securing it, in every part, 
and consequently in the whole, depends on personal 
Christian character. 

To show this, let us consider the amount of influence 
of two distinct kinds, which may be exerted by a particu- 
lar church. It consists, we will suppose, of a hundred 
members; and in the daily business and pursuits of life, 
they are connected, probably, more or less directly, with 
two thousand persons. That is, there are two thousand 
persons, at least, who are acquainted with some one or 
more of them. One kind of influence then, exerted by 
these Christians, is, that of their private character and 
conduct, and the spirit manifested in their dealings as they 
affect these two thousand. Again, they aie interested, 
we will suppose, in the spread of religion, and they con- 
tribute a considerable sum of money, to circulate bibles 
or tracts, or to support missionaries in foreign lands. Now 
the point is, that the former, viz. the private influence, 
exerted over those with whom they come into immediate 
connexion, is far more important than the other. It is 
this kind of influence, which is more frequently spoken of 
in the New Testament than the other; and if the church 
felt the importance, and universally acted accordingly, 
the gospel would make far more rapid progress in tho 



262 THE CORNER-STONE [Ch. 9 



Duties to ourselves. Common danger. Looking to others. 

world, than it now does. The reader will see in the 
sequel, that I do not mean to undervalue the second 
mode of promoting Christ's kingdom. It should have its 
proper place; but the first and great duty of every Chris- 
tian, is to see that his own heart is right, and that the 
light of the glory of God, shines in all his private conduct. 

And yet this is very often forgotten. The heart, de- 
ceitful and hard towards God, loves to forget it. We 
seek moral renewal for ourselves, and we feel, at first, 
a strong interest in our Maker's service; but the world 
comes in again, and gets the victory; and since we do 
not like to renew the painful struggle necessary to 
overthrow it once more, we leave ourselves, and endeavor 
to quiet conscience by activity in our efforts to save 
others from their sins. Our pride is gratified by the 
thought, that we stand on safer and better ground than 
those for whom we labor, and many other worldly feel- 
ings may be gratified, in devising, and executing our 
plans. In the meantime, our own hearts remain cold 
and dead; our petitions become feeble, our prayers 
formal; desires for real spiritual blessings for our own 
souls are gone, and we work industriously, with the 
pretence of endeavoring to procure for others, what we 
do not really desire for ourselves. 

This must not be so, if we wish to do any good to the 
cause of Christ. We must look within, and seek first 
to eradicate our own sins, and have our own hearts right. 
We should pray for spiritual blessings for ourselves, and 
see that we do it sincerely. Many and many a night 
when the Christian kneels for his evening prayers, he 
cannot honestly ask God to come and be with him. The 
world has full possession; and if he prays in words, that 
God would come and break its chains, it is with a secret 
wish that he may not be heard. If we examine ourselves 
with careful scrutiny, we shall often find that this is 
really the case. The Christian, therefore, who wishes 



Ch. 9.] THE PARTING COMMAND 263 

Watching one's self. Common way of evading duty. 

to be at his post, and to act efficiently for his Master, 
should pray for himself, and see that he can pray hon- 
estly. 

Again, he should watch himself. We are all far more 
willing to watch one another, than to watch ourselves. 
It is easier, and more pleasant to see the faults of others, 
than our own. We like to think of the obstinacy, and 
ingratitude, and folly of those that are entirely without 
God in the world, far better than to see the same qualities 
in ourselves, who profess to have tasted of the happiness 
of piety and then have almost thrown the cup aside. 
Now there is, unquestionably, such a fault as turning 
our thoughts too exclusively to ourselves. Many per- 
sons err in this way, and to them, advice contrary to this, 
should be given. But such cases are rare. The mass 
of Christians, especially in this busy age, are far more 
inclined to be watchful over all their neighbors, than 
over themselves, and especially to see the hardness 
of heart, and the base ingratitude exhibited by sinners, 
while they entirely overlook their own. 

Once more; we should labor for our own spiritual good. 
In religious action, the natural law in respect to selfish- 
ness seems to be reversed. We are far more ready to 
toil for others, than for ourselves; we had rather that 
they would repent, than that we should grow in grace; — 
we prefer buying and distributing a dozen tracts for the 
unregenerate, to reading attentively and prayerfully a 
treatise designed to promote our own progress in holi- 
ness. 

This is not surprising, though it is very wrong. Un- 
happily for us, moral renovation leaves sin in our hearts, 
wounded, indeed, but very imperfectly subdued; and this 
is one of the forms, which, for ever deceitful, it continu- 
ally assumes; but it must not be so. The best way to 
spread religion, is to exemplify it. A pure church is the 
most powerful army; the Christian armor consists of the 



264 THE CORNER-STONE [_Ch. 9. 

Influence of personal holiness. Influence of action. 

Christian graces, and it is with these, thai* victories 
really valuable, are alone to be won. 

But it is not my intention here, to point out the means 
of growing in grace, but only to bring to view the im- 
portance of a high standard of personal holiness among 
believers, as a means of spreading the religion of the 
Savior. There is a great tendency to look with too ex- 
clusive an interest at the public movements of the church 
in its efforts to extend its boundaries, while the far more 
powerful influences which might be exerted by piety and 
holiness within, are comparatively neglected. The in- 
terest felt, however, in the public movements of the 
church, is not yet half what it ought to be. I do not 
wish to depress the one, but to raise the other. In fact 
they generally go hand in hand. Right efforts, made in 
the right spirit, are among the very best means of promot- 
ing piety and spiritual progress, in the individual who 
makes them; there is a sort of reflex action that brings to 
his own heart, the blessings which he seeks to bring down 
upon others. But to accomplish this object, they must 
be right efforts, made in the right spirit: and here is the 
danger. 

In fact there is no question that a man may be led to 
the most vigorous efforts to promote the cause of religion 
from motives which are altogether distinct from those 
which the Savior requires. Self interest, party spirit, 
love of honor, spiritual pride, and a thousand other mo- 
tives animate a vast proportion of the zeal which is pro- 
fessedly expended in the cause of Christ. One man, a 
professor of religion, and in fact a sincere Christian, is 
very much engaged in promoting the building of a 
church. The cause of Christ, he thinks, requires it. 
So it does, and so will the value of his property be in- 
creased by its being placed in its vicinity: and it will 
require a great deal of careful self-examination, for him 
to ascertain in precisely what proportion these two mo- 



Ch. 9.] THE PARTING COMMAND. 265 

Double motives. Bad principles cultivated by leligious acts. 

tives act upon him. In fact, if a destroying angel were 
commissioned to pass over our land, and apply the torch 
to every church which pride, or interest, or love of 
honor had erected, and leave those only which are the 
monuments of sincere and honest love to the Savior, we 
fear that the smoke of a great many conflagrations would 
ascend. 

In the same manner, a minister will be active and ar- 
dent in his efforts to awaken religious interest among his 
people; or, an author may write a book, ostensibly to 
give religious instruction. Now they both may be led 
forward in their work by a desire to do good; but it 
must not be forgotten that the very same success which 
accomplishes good for the cause, brings honor to the 
laborer; and many an enterprising and zealous workman 
will find, if he looks honestly at his heart, that the world- 
ly feeling has far more than its fair share in the work. 

It is the same with all the open and active means of 
endeavoring to promote the Savior's cause. There is 
so much mingling of motives in them, that it is difficult 
to tell, in many cases, whether the natural or the renew- 
ed feelings are most cultivated by such efforts. If these 
things are done in the right spirit, they cultivate that 
spirit; — and on the other hand, the feelings which prompt 
them are strengthened, if they are wrong. Bad passions 
as well as good, thrive under the influence of indulgence, 
and consequently the very same act, such as contributing 
money for any religious or charitable purpose, may be 
the means of awakening and cherishing in the heart of 
the Christian who makes it, love to God, and a warm de- 
sire for the salvation of men. It may wean him from 
the world, and link him to his Savior by a bond closer 
than before. On the other hand, it may give the reins 
to selfishness and passion, and banish spiritual peace and 
joy, and bring back the soul very far in its sad return 
to the dominion of sin 

23 



266 



THE CORNER-STONE. 



[Ch. 9. 



Influence of the hei»rt greater than that of the conduct. 

It is therefore unsafe to depend, as too many do, on 
mere Christian action, for their growth in grace. It is 
sometimes unquestionably wise, to turn the thoughts of 
some dejected desponding Christian away from himself, 
in the hope that he may find cheerfulness and enjoyment 
in doing work for his Master. It is, in many cases, the 
very best advice which can be given. Still those in- 
stances, though many in the aggregate, are individually 
rare. In all ordinary cases, the great danger is the other 
way, — of going out of ourselves, and seeking to win 
God's favor by the bustle of what we call Christian 
action, while the passions of the heart remain unsubdued, 
and its recesses of hidden guilt, unexplored. It is a 
great deal easier, with hearts such as ours, to give 
money, or to erect a church, or to exhort in a religious 
assembly, or to write good advice for others, than to 
come and humble our own selves, and crucify the flesh 
with its affections and lusts. 

The advantage of making more direct and special 
efforts to induce Christians to cultivate the right spirit of 
piety, than to induce them to go forward in Christian 
action, is manifest, from the consideration, that warm 
piety in the heart will almost spontaneously go forth into 
Christian action, whether you urge it on, or not: but 
the most uninterrupted and energetic Christian action 
will not necessarily produce the right state of heart. It 
may only foster and strengthen the bad principles of 
action from which it springs. Besides, the light of a 
pure and honest Christian character must of itself do 
good among men. It exerts an influence which they 
cannot but feel, and it is an influence, far more powerful 
than any other. Suppose we could station in any com- 
munity in our country, a little band of perfect Christians, 
and leave them there, merely as specimens of the practi- 
cal effects of Christianity. Connect them by the ordi- 
nary pursuits of business, with the mass of society, but 



Ch. 9.] THE PARTING COMMAND. 267 

Holy example. Unholy example. The latter common. 

cut them off, if you please, from all opportunity to make 
direct efforts to inculcate the principles of religion upon 
others. What an effect their simple presence would 
produce! Pure, holy, harmless and undefiled, weaned 
entirely from this world, and living entirely for another. 
Hearts warm with love to God, and ardent affection for 
one another, and untiring benevolence towards all around 
them; selfishness gone, — pride, censoriousness, resent- 
ment, all gone; and instead of the base passions of hu- 
man nature, the whole soul filled with the noble and gen- 
erous and exalted sentiments which Christianity tends to 
inspire. What an influence would be exerted by such a 
church, even if they were deprived of all those means 
of influence on which we ordinarily depend; and how 
different would it be in its nature, from that which is 
now too often exerted, in the towns and villages of our 
land, by those who have in charge the cause of the 
Savior there. The minister, cold and heartless, — close 
and selfish in his dealings during the week; — and then 
preaching, on the Sabbath, in the performance of a dull 
routine of duty, or to gratify the vanity of rhetorical or 
theological display; — the father worldly and selfish, — 
devoted, with his whole soul, to the work of making a 
fortune, — and now and then adding his name to a sub- 
scription, to keep up his credit as a benevolent man, or 
perhaps to get rid of unpleasant importunity; — and a 
mother, scolding and fretting among her children and 
domestics all the morning, and then decking her face 
in assumed and heartless smiles, or in an expression 
cf affected solemnity, to go to a religious or charitable 
meeting in the afternoon. My description may seem 
unnecessarily severe: I hope it is so. At all events, 
one thing is certain, that Christians cannot hope that 
God will bless them, and prosper his cause in their 
hands, unless their hearts are right, and their efforts in 
his service arc made from honest desires to promote 



268 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 9 

li. Personal influence. Its value as a means of doing good. 

their Savior's cause. And this will not be the case, un- 
less the spirit of religion, which is the spirit of peace, 
love and joy, reign habitually and incessantly at home, 
as well as abroad, — in retirement as well as in public: 
and if it really exists, it will show itself as certainly in 
the tone and manner with which we speak to our chil- 
dren, or bear the little trials of every day life, as in the 
most public acts performed in the face of the world. 

If then, you wish, Christian, to do any thing effectual 
for the Savior, look within: labor first and most con- 
stantly with your own heart, so that the light of pure re- 
ligion may beam in beauty and gentleness there. The 
world around, will see and feel its moral power. Many 
will be led by it, to the fountain which has purified you; 
they will follow your example, they will imbibe your 
spirit; and thus, while coming nearer and nearer to the 
Savior yourself, you will in the most effectual manner 
extend his kingdom. 

II. PERSONAL INFLUENCE. 

Aim at acquiring as strong a personal influence as 
possible over others. We put this next to the work of 
securing your own progress in holiness, because we re- 
ally believe it stands next. The man whose own heart 
is right towards God, and who has a strong influence 
over others, must inevitably do a great deal towards 
promoting the Savior's cause. He may in many cases 
mistake; he may work to disadvantage; but he has the 
essentials, and to a great extent he must succeed. But 
let us explain what we mean by personal influence. 

Here are two Christians equally devoted to the"r Mas- 
ter's cause. One, however, feels that next to his respon- 
sibility for his own personal character, his highest trust 
is his direct influence over others. This influence he 
will steadily endeavor both to preserve and to increase. 
In all his intercourse with others, he endeavors to ac- 



Ch. 9.] THE PARTING COMMAND. 269 

The contrast. Repulsive piety. , Its bad influence. 

quire their good will. To find his way to their hearts, 
his benevolence is active, practical, operating at all 
times, and diffusing enjoyment all around him. He has 
regard for the rights and for the feelings of others, as 
well as for his own. He sympathizes with the difficul- 
ties and trials of those who are connected with him; and 
thus, independently of the light which his character sheds 
around him, he is the object of strong personal regard. 

The other is a very different man. He cultivates the 
spirit of piety, and bewails his sins before God. He is 
ready to make even great sacrifice to do good, whenever 
the opportunity presents: but in all the thousand little 
connexions which bind him to society, he seems morose 
and stern. The ordinary kindnesses and courtesies of 
life, he never exhibits. He reserves his charity for 
masses of men, and his benevolence for great occasions. 
In all the ordinary dealings, in which he becomes con- 
nected from day to day with his fellows, he is harsh and 
unconciliating; firm in the defence of all his rights, and 
inflexible in resisting every injury. He means to do 
what is right; but on the line which his eye marks out 
as the line of rectitude, he stands firm and perpendic- 
ular. He ought to stand thus on the line of rectitude 
in respect to moral principle, but not on that of justice, in 
regard to his own interests. He never sympathizes with 
those who are dependant upon him. They find that he 
does not think of their temptations, or feel for the trials 
they have to bear. If they are sick, he relieves their 
wants perhaps, with cold propriety, but gives no evi- 
dence of compassion, or of real good will. 

Now with the same degree of piety, if it is possible for 
the piety to be the same in two such cases, and with the 
same degree of wealth, and with the same influence of 
standing, how different will be the amount of service 
which these two individuals can render to their Master. 
The one is connected, by the closest ties, to many human 
23* 



270 THE CORNER-STONE [Ch. 9. 

The fault generally incurable. Unsound logic. 

hearts; and his sentiments, his feelings, his spirit are 
insensibly and continually adopted by all around him. 
His light shines and allures. The other, not only can 
do no good, but he is constantly but insensibly doing 
harm. The world around consider his character as 
illustrating the natural tendencies of religion. Many 
cases have occurred, where a Christian of wealth and 
public influence has had such a character that a whole 
community has been seared in conscience, and alienated 
from the truth, by the associations which such a specta- 
cle constantly before their eyes has led them to form. 
They would have disliked the purity and spirituality of 
religion without this, but they are led by it to dislike it 
still more. They are driven farther and farther away 
from God, by means of the influence of one of his friends. 

Such characters, too, when once formed, seem to be 
incurable; for as every mad projector defends himself 
against the most convincing proofs of the wiidness and 
impracticability of his schemes, by recollecting the op 
position and incredulity which Columbus had to contend 
with, so do these Christians consider every difficulty 
they incur, and every feeling of opposition which they 
awaken in others, as proofs of their fidelity in the cause 
of their Master. " He that lives godly, will suffer per- 
secution," says the apostle; but they read it the other 
way. All that suffer persecution must certainly be godly. 
IS ot very sound logic, the impartial reader will say: but 
any logic is sound enough to convince, when it is offered 
by interest or pride. 

It is the duty then of every individual, who wishes to 
obey the Savior's dying command, and in obedience to 
it, to assist his Master in spreading the reign of piety 
among men, to take care of his personal influence. 

A very large number of the readers of this work will 
however, in all probability, attempt to place themselves 
out of the reach of all these remarks, by saying to them- 



Ch. 9.] THE PARTING COMMAND 271 

Supposed want of influence. Extent and power of influence. 

selves; " This is all very true, but it does not apply to 
me. I have no influence, and from the very circum- 
stances in which Providence has placed me, I cannot 
have any." 

While such readers have been perusing the preceding 
paragraphs^ their thoughts have been fixed upon some 
influential individuals whom they could call to mind, and 
they have considered these remarks as applicable only 
to them, or to persons placed, like them, in stations of 
trust and responsibility in the service of God. Perhaps 
some one who reads this, may wish he could apply the 
remarks to himself. Sometimes, perhaps, in your hour 
of devotion, when your heart is warmed by reflecting 
what the Savior has done for you, you sigh to reflect 
how little you can do in return. You wish you had 
some public or general influence which you might devote 
to the cause of the Savior. But you are alone; your 
sphere of duty is limited to the little spot in which you 
move from day to day, with very little influence over 
other minds, so that even when you wish to do good, it 
seems scarcely in your power. 

This feeling is one which very extensively prevails; 
but it is founded upon an entire mistake in -regard to the 
nature of the influence which may be made most valua- 
ble for the purpose of promoting the Savior's cause. 
You think you have no influence. You have a very 
powerful influence. It is not extensive, but it is power- 
ful, and this distinction you overlook. Let us consider 
it a little. 

The chief magistrate of a populous city has an exten- 
sive influence. It reaches a great many minds. His 
plans and his measures promote or injure the interests of 
thousands. They are discussed, and approved or con- 
demned, in many a little group, and thus, out of all the 
multitudes around him, there are very few who do not 
know his name, at least, if they do not hear of his doings 



272 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 9. 

The chief magistrate. The two sisters. Mutual influence. 

The influence of what passes in that one man's mind, 
extends, in this way, to tens of thousands. But after all, 
his official influence is not very powerful in any individ- 
ual case. In the aggregate, it is very powerful, — but it 
is an aggregate made up of very small items. Select 
from among the multitudes with whom he is daily thrown 
into connexion, the one to whom he is bound most closely, 
— over whom he has the greatest ascendency; and how 
great an ascendency is it? Why, it is a tie of business. 
It is the influence of a slight interest in common, and 
the chain will remain just so long as the business and 
the common interest retain their hold. The power of 
heart over heart, in such a case, is very small. The 
man, from the eminence on which he is placed, holds a 
slight control, a feeble influence, over many thousands 
We gaze at the greatness of it, in amount, and forget 
how feeble it is in detail. The very child, returning from 
school with the companion of his studies and his plays, 
holds an ascendency and a control over the heart, to a 
degree which the statesman or the magistrate never ob- 
tains. Now it is influence over the heart, which is to be 
made effectual in making friends for the Savior. 

Suppose that two obscure and solitary individuals live 
together in a retired dwelling among the mountains. 
Their pursuits, their interests, their joys and sorrows are 
common. If one is cheerful and happy, the light of her 
smile is reflected upon the countenance of the other. 
If one is gloomy, or impatient, or sad, the sympathy 
which years have cherished, transfers the emotion to the 
bosom of the other. However dissimilar in disposition 
and character they may have been in youth, every dif- 
ference is gradually diminished or destroyed. They 
come to be interested in the same pursuits, to fear the 
same evils, and to have every wish and every emotion 
common. This process of assimilation goes on till the 
last, — and when one of them at length lies down in the 



Ch. 9.] THE PARTING COMMAND 273 

Powerful but not extensive. The child and his little brother. 

grave, the other is left to mourn the loss, with a feeling 
of irretrievable bereavement, to which human life can 
hardly afford a parallel. 

This, now, is a powerful influence ; — but it is not an 
extensive one. The influence of each could extend 
only to the other. The world around was nothing to 
them. And what is peculiar in this case is, that the 
greatness of the ascendency would depend, most of all, 
upon the very fact that the rest of mankind were remov- 
ed beyond their reach. The fact that they were nothing 
to all the world, was the very reason why they were so 
much to one another. And it is so with us all. The 
more a man's influence is extended and diffused, the 
more is it ordinarily weakened, in its bearing upon in- 
dividuals. The public officer, who reaches a hundred 
thousand minds, reaches them all feebly; and if you wish 
to find an example of the highest power exerted by one 
heart over another, you must seek it in the case of some 
one secluded from the world, and engaged in a round of 
duties, which bring him into contact with but few. 

We may go farther than this, and say that there is 
scarcely an example of influence to be found, so power- 
ful as that exerted by a little child just old enough to 
talk, over his little brother or sister a year or two young- 
er than itself. He is in all things its leader and guide 
and oracle: with perhaps more power over its heart, 
than the world exhibits in any other case. The little 
learner follows and imitates his superior, in almost every 
thing. He goes wherever his companion leads, — and 
mimics all his actions, — and repeats, in his imperfect 
and broken articulation, all his words; and he is thus 
led forward to almost all his knowledge, and guided, in 
almost the whole formation of his character, by a child, 
only a little older than himself, and who is almost en- 
tirely unconscious of the influence he is thus exerting 
over an immortal mind 



274 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 9. 

None too young to do good. Influence over brothers and sisters. 

Such is the distinction between the extent, and the in- 
dividual power of influence, and it does not require much 
reasoning to show which is most efficient as a means of 
promoting the salvation of souls. Piety is a feeling of 
the heart, and he who would promote it, must gain access 
to the heart. Consequently, the more direct the access, 
in the individual case, the greater is the prospect of 
success. A Christian laborer who is employed day after 
day by an irreligious man, has a far greater influence 
over him in a religious point of view, than the chief 
magistrate of the country can have. The laborer must 
have a great influence, in the formation of the religious 
character of his employer. If he is gentle and benevo- 
lent, and of unbending integrity and faithfulness, and if 
it appears that these traits of character spring from his 
Christian principle, the example thus set, will speak with 
an eloquence which words can seldom equal. 

Perhaps this chapter is read by some one who has been 
accustomed to consider himself too young to do any good. 
You look around you, and see others enjoying opportu- 
nities of making direct efforts in the Savior's cause, and 
you think that if you could enjoy such a privilege, you 
would highly prize it. " Had I but a class in a sabbath 
school," you say, " how happy should I be, to endeavor 
to lead my pupils to the Savior." 

You have not, indeed, a class in the sabbath school, 
but you have a little sister who is infinitely more under 
your influence, than any class of sabbath school children 
could be. You would see them only on the sabbath, 
and then but for an hour, — that too, in a crowded room, 
and among multitudes of strangers. Your brother or 
your sister, however, is with you every day. They 
come to you for assistance in a thousand difficulties, and 
for guidance in all their perplexities and cares. You 
can see them at all times; you can watch for opportu- 
nities to interest and attract them; you can help them to 



Ch. 9.] THE PARTING COMMAND. 275 

Every Christian has an influence. Effect of universal fidelity. 

forsake their sins, and to watch against temptation, by 
being at all times at hand; and above all, you can set 
them a constant example of the power of piety in making 
your own conduct what it ought to be, and your own 
heart peaceful and happy. Now the influence which 
you thus may possess, is altogether greater than you 
could have as a Sabbath school teacher. It is not so 
extensive, but it is more powerful in the individual case, 
and this is what is to be considered in judging of the 
opportunity you have to do good. Improve first, the 
little field which Providence has put so entirely into your 
hand, before you look forward to wider spheres. 

There is not now a Christian on the globe who has 
not a very powerful influence of the kind which I have 
described, over one, two or more minds around him. 
Providence has placed us all, in connexion with our 
fellow beings, in such a way that we must exert a great 
influence upon the formation of their characters. The 
power which We thus hold, is far greater than we sup- 
pose, and until all within the circle of our acquaintance, 
however narrow that circle may be, are devoted and 
happy Christians, we must never say, and never feel 
that God has placed us in circumstances in which we 
have nothing to do for him. 

It is on these principles, and for such purposes, 
that every individual Christian should labor to deepen 
and extend the influence in his hands; and it is by 
means of this, mainly, that he is to aim at building up 
the Savior's kingdom. If every one would be faithful, 
in the sphere in which Providence has placed him, the 
most astonishing effects would be immediately witnessed. 
Suppose every Christian were to come up at once to his 
duty as a follower of Christ, renounce the world en- 
tirely, search his heart, and cultivate, by every means 
in his power, his own spiritual progress, — and then 



276 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 9. 

Future spread of the gospel. The church the pillar of the truth. 

devote himself to the work of doing good in the narrow- 
sphere of his own personal influence. There would be 
no splendid conquests achieved by any one; but by the 
united efforts of all, the work would go on with universal 
and almost inconceivable power. No one who knows 
the effect of holiness, when it appears in living and act- 
ing reality, in arresting attention and alarming the con- 
science, and in winning those who witness it, to penitence 
and faith, can doubt that each individual who should thus 
live might hope to be the means of bringing one, two, 
three, or four, every year, to the service of his Master: 
and to double or treble or quadruple the church in a year, 
would be progress which would soon change the face of 
things in such a world as this. 

This is the way undoubtedly, that the principles of the 
gospel are ultimately to spread in the world: through 
the influence of the lives and efforts of private Christians. 
I speak of course, now, of those countries where Chris- 
tianity has nominal possession. Private Christians look 
far too much away from themselves, to ministers and 
missionaries and bibles, and tracts, and imagine, that 
their business is merely to sustain the efforts made 
through these means. The far more valuable and power- 
ful influences, which might be brought to bear upon a 
world lying in sin, from the light of religion in the hearts 
and lives of the great mass of believers, is lost sight of, 
and forgotten. But it is the church which is the pillar 
and ground of the truth. It is the great mass of disciples, 
which are the light of the world. Or rather it is they 
who ought to be; for a cold and worldly church, instead 
of being the pillar of the truth, is a millstone about its 
neck. Instead of casting around them the beams of 
heavenly light, its members shed abroad a darkness and 
a gloom which there is nothing to dispel. 

Be careful then, not only to watch your own progress 
in piety, but to seek influence over your fellow men, — ■ 



Ch. 9.] THE PARTING COMMAND. 277 

in. Study of human nature. Mistakes often made. 

the influence of heart over heart; and as far as you secure 
it, consecrate it all, honestly and sincerely to the cause 
of Christ. 

III. THE STUDY OF HUMAN NATURE. 

Carefully study the powers and tendencies of the hu- 
man soul, especially in its religious aspects, and be pre^- 
pared to act intelligently in all that you do, in attempting 
to influence the heart. Most sad mistakes are made in 
this respect, by many religious men, who make efforts 
blindly, and without consideration, as if they imagined 
that religious truth was to accomplish its object by some 
mere mechanical power which it possesses, and as if it 
were of no consequence how it is applied. 

In order to avoid this evil, it is necessary to consider, 
before we attempt to act upon any heart, what is the real 
effect which we wish to produce upon it, and then to 
adapt our means to the production of the effect. Many 
persons err most grossly in this re-spect. A teacher, for 
example, offers a prize to be awarded to the pupil who will 
commit to memory the greatest number of verses in the 
Bible. Emulation and jealous rivalry immediately take 
possession of the class, and reign supreme. But the 
verses are committed. The boys are indefatigable in 
their efforts, and if committing verses in the Bible was 
the ultimate object in view, and was to be accomplished 
at any sacrifice, the plan might be considered triumphant- 
ly successful. But committing passages of Scripture is 
not the end: it is only the means to an end. That end 
is the moral renewal of the heart, and it is defeated en- 
tirely by the mode taken to secure it. 

Again, a religious man goes to converse with an unbe- 
liever. I do not mean one who openly rejects Christiani- 
ty as a whole, but who denies its fundamental truths, and 
lives in sin, sheltered by his unbelief. Now the proper 
object of a conversation with him is not to convince his 

24 



278 


THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 9. 


Example of Paul. 


His preaching. Mistakes of Christians. 



intellect, but to awaken his conscience. The difficulty 
is not with the understanding, but with the heart; and 
instead of wasting time in a fruitless attempt, by argu- 
ment, to force upon his mind evidence which he is fully 
determined not to see, the true policy is to bring up, 
gently but clearly, questions of duty, based on what he 
admits to be true. 

The Apostle Paul understood this principle, and prac- 
tised upon it most perfectly. He adapted his discourses 
most adroitly to the condition and wants of his auditory 
When he reasoned before Felix, it was upon righteous- 
ness, temperance, and judgment to come; topics which 
his distinguished hearer could appreciate and understand 
He based his addresses to the Jews on the sentiments 
of their own Scriptures. At Athens he endeavored to 
awaken the conscience by appealing to the few simple 
truths which his hearers there could not deny; and 
in his epistles to the Christian church, he went at once 
into all the sublime and mysterious truths which are re- 
vealed by the full light of the Christian dispensation 
He studied human nature, and adapted what he had to 
say to the moral condition and wants of those whom he 
addressed ; always making it his great object to awaken 
the slumbering conscience by the highest truths which 
his audience were prepared to understand. 

In their efforts to4>romote the cause of religion, Chris- 
tians often act as if they imagined that the great object 
was to bring truth before the mind, whereas the real 
difficulty is to gain influence for what is already there. 
The work which we have to do is to touch the heart, not 
to pour cold light upon the mind. Now to awaken 
warm feeling in the heart is unquestionably the province 
of the spirit of God. We cannot effect it alone, but we 
may adapt our efforts to this design, and at all events, 
we may so manage them, as not to thwart or oppose 
it. The reverse is often the fact. Many and many a 



Ch. 9.] THE PARTING COMMAND. 279 

Guides in the study. The Bible. Observation. Books. 

time is religious truth presented to a mind in such a way, 
and accompanied by such attending circumstances, as 
to destroy its effect. The various ways by which this is 
done cannot in such a chapter as this, be pointed out. 
What we wish is to put the Christian on his guard, that 
he may watch his plans and methods, and see that he 
does not defeat his own designs. 

The proper guides, in such a study of the human heart, 
are the Bible and observation, not theoretical books. 
Perhaps a very large proportion of those who make 
human character a study at all, go first to theoretical 
writers for general views, and then just look into the 
conduct of men for the mere purpose of finding illustra- 
tions or proofs of them. They never go into the field as 
independent observers, ready to notice whatever they 
may see, and to leave it to tell its own plain story. Cer- 
tain facts, which accord with their adopted theories, stand 
out in bold and prominent relief, while others are over- 
looked or forgotten: or if they are too conspicuous to be 
completely disregarded, they are warped and twisted to 
suit the false conceptions of the mind. Such a course 
besides fixing error, is an insurmountable barrier to pro- 
gress. We notice and speculate upon human conduct 
just so far as the ground is covered by our theological 
or metaphysical opinions, and beyond that we do not go. 

Books, and the opinions of great men on human na- 
ture, may perhaps be guides, but they never should be 
trammels and barriers. The field of observation is open 
before all; and Christianity, while it gives us the noblest 
work to do, gives us also the loftiest science to study. 
It puts, too, all the means and opportunities for observa- 
tion fully before us, and says in spirit, " You have a 
world of mind around you, open to your influence and 
accessible to your observation. Make it your great 
study to understand it, and your great work to bring it 
home to God." 



280 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 9 



Theories. Theological notions. Want of skill 

In regard, however, to the study of human nature, the 
difficulty with most persons is not that they do not make 
any observations of their own, but they do not connect 
the results they obtain by such observation, with their 
religious knowledge. Most men have in fact two entire- 
ly distinct and independent sets of ideas in regard to 
human character. One, obtained from metaphysical and 
theological speculations, and the other from their own 
intercourse with men in the common business and pur- 
suits of life. These two classes of ideas too, they keep 
distinct and separate. On the sabbath, and when reading 
religious books, or thinking of the human soul in its 
theological aspects and relations, they take one view, 
and in the ordinary business of life they take another; 
and the knowledge of human nature, and the skill in 
influencing it which men so easily acquire in the latter 
case, very rarely extends itself to the former. It ac- 
cordingly very often happens, that a man will display an 
unusual share of discrimination and delicacy of touch, so 
to speak, in operating on the minds around him in re- 
spect to the common affairs of the community, or to 
opinions and customs relating to ordinary life, while he 
is awkward, rough, and unsuccessful in every thing like 
the exertion of religious influence. Here, he seems to 
act on new and independent principles. He throws all 
the knowledge and skill which had proved itself so valu- 
able in the other case, utterly aside, and proceeds, if 
indeed he proceeds at all, in a blind, mechanical, and 
formal manner, which is as unsuccessful in religion, as it 
would be in any thing else. 

In truth, a great portion of the religious community 
would acknowledge, if they would be honest, that they 
do not consider the exertion of religious influence as 
coming under the ordinary rules which should regulate 
the action of mind upon mind. They justly attribute all 
hope of final success to a divine influence upon the hearty 



Ch. 


9.] 




THE 


TARTING 


COMMAND. 






281 


Careful sti 


uly 


necessary. 






IV. 


Use of 


property. 



but this, though it assigns a large part of the work to a 
higher power, does not at all alter the nature of the other 
part of it, which remains committed to us. We should 
always consider then, when making any efforts to bring 
a friend or a neighbor or a child to God, whether we 
should take a similar course, or at least one based on 
similar principles, or similar views of human nature, to 
accomplish any other change in his feelings or conduct. 
Be careful also to make every experiment and effort, a 
means of increasing your stock of knowledge of the 
human mind, and of its tendencies and movements in 
respect to religious feeling, Watch the operation of 
causes and the nature of effects. Look into the Bible 
for a standard of religious duty, and for correct views of 
the nature and obligation of God's law; and then look 
into the wide field of action and character, which is de- 
veloping itself all around you, and seek practical knowlege 
of man there. When you fail of producing a desired 
effect, investigate the cause of your failure; when causes 
from which you would have looked for one result, pro- 
duce a different or a contrary one, examine the case and 
ascertain the difficulty. When success attends your 
efforts, analyze them with care, to discover what were 
the essential conditions of success. In this waj, yo*i 
cannot but make progress, and it is not at all necessary 
that acting thus faithfully and skilfully in doing your 
work, should lead you at all to undervalue the necessity 
of most efficient and continued help from above. 



USE Oi- PROPERTY. 



The Christian religion takes higher ground in respect 
to human duty than any pretended message from heaven 
ever dared to assume, and it makes claims, whic'h for 
boldness and authority stand entirely without a parallel. 
Its theory is substantially this. That it is the great 
design of Jehovah to establish an universal kingdom of 
24* 



282 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 9. 

Claims of Christianity. Common question. 

benevolence, and consequent happiness: — that this king- 
dom has been, in this, world, overturned and destroyed; 
and that all who wish its restoration are to come and 
give themselves wholly to the work of promoting it. He 
does not require men to devote a part of their time, 
and a part of their property to his purposes, leaving 
them to employ the rest for themselves. He claims the 
whole, — or rather he invites men to come and conse- 
crate the whole to the work of co-operation with him. 
He allows no distinction between his property and ours. 
He makes no specification of the amount of time, or the 
extent of influence, which we should devote to his cause: 
but, on the other hand, he most distinctly says, that as 
he is devoting all his energies, and employing all his 
time, in the promotion of universal holiness and happi- 
ness, he expects all who wish to be considered on his 
side to come and devote all theirs to this work too. 

The question is very often asked, " What proportion 
of a man's income ought to be devoted to charitable pur- 
poses?" But the question itself seems to rest on an 
entire misconception of the nature of the claim which 
God makes upon men. It may have either of two 
meanings. In the first place, the inquirer may mean to 
ask, what proportion of his means of doing good in this 
world, ought to be devoted to his Master's service, and 
what to his own: — or, on the other hand, it may mean 
this: — when all that a man has, is consecrated to God, 
what proportion of his means of influence should he em- 
ploy himself, and what portion should he commit to others 
to employ, for it will be seen by a very slight examina- 
tion, that when money is given for a charitable purpose, 
it is generally a method of sustaining others in the work 
of doing good. Now in the first of these two significa- 
tions, the question is evidently based on erroneous 
views. God will admit of no such division of the heart, 
nor of the powers of his creatures. In the second, the 



Ch. 9. J THE PARTING COMMAND. 283 

Case supposed. The rude Islanders. Ways of reaching them. 

question must be unanswerable; that is, it can receive no 
general answer, for the courses to be taken in respect 
to it, are as various as the conditions and circumstances 
of men. 

But let us analyze a little more accurately the real 
nature of doing good by means of money. It is called 
giving, but strictly speaking it is not giving. It is sim- 
ply a combination of men in one place, to produce a 
certain moral effect in another; and money is made use 
of, as the mere instrument by which the object is accom- 
plished. This we shall easily see, by looking at a par- 
ticular case. 

To make the reasoning the more simple, we will sup- 
pose a case which would never precisely occur, but we 
can easily apply the principles which it illustrates, to 
ordinary instances. We will suppose that, on some 
rude and inhospitable coast, remote from the fertile and 
wealthy regions of the civilized world, there is a com- 
munity of hardy settlers, who are devoted and consis- 
tent Christians. They enjoy religious privileges them- 
selves, and at length they form the wish to do something 
for the ignorant and vicious inhabitants of a small island, 
a few miles from their coast. They are themselves de- 
pendent upon their daily exertions, for their daily bread, 
and consequently, though they can all, besides discharg- 
ing the duties they owe to their families, and to the poor 
around them, find an hour or two in each day, which 
they can devote to God's service in some foreign field, 
no one of them can gain time enough to go away from 
home, to visit the destitute islanders. Now there are 
evidently two ways by which they can surmount the 
difficulty. Any one of them can lay by the proceeds 
of his labor during those hours which are not required 
in the discharge of his duties at home, until he has 
accumulated stores sufficient to supply his family and 
himself during a visit to the island The other plan is,. 



284 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 9. 

Various plans. Co-operation. Money. 

for all to combine, and send one of their number, by unit- 
ing their labors, during those extra hours, and thus find- 
ing support for the one who was absent. Let us sup- 
pose the latter plan to be adopted; and to make the case 
more distinct, we will imagine that one particular hour 
is assigned at which all who remain at home, shall be at 
work for the family of the one who was selected to go. 
When the hour arrives, the missionary is perhaps at the 
island, explaining to the inhabitants the nature of reli- 
gion, and the claims of duty, and his friends and neigh- 
bors at home are each in his own little garden, laboring 
to provide food and clothing for their absent brother and 
for his lonely family. They are all at work together, 
and in one common cause. They are not, indeed, all in 
immediate connexion with the souls whose benefit is the 
object of the enterprise, but they who are at home, 
laboring to sustain the absent one, are as really and 
effectually operating upon the distant island, as he who 
has gone. They are all engaged in one common enter- 
prise, for the promotion of God's cause, each doing his 
assigned part. Neither is giving to the other, — unless 
indeed he who goes can claim some gratitude from the 
rest, for having assumed the severer and more trying 
portion. 

Now money is only a representative of the proceeds of 
labor, and if, instead of sending out to their missionary, 
the provision and clothing which he would need when 
engaged in his enterprise, his Christian friends at home 
should convert those provisions and clothing into the 
form of money, and send them to him in that form, it 
would not alter the case. They would still all be labor- 
ers in one common cause, different parts assigned to 
each, but all laboring together to spread the gospel, 
according to the command of their Master. Nor would 
the case be altered, if instead of working for this pur- 
pose at some specified time, each one was to labor 



Ch. 9.] THE PARTING COMMAND. 285 

Its nature as a means of doing good. 

wb3n he pleased, in carrying forward this cause; nor is 
it essential that such labors should be kept distinct from 
the ordinary labors of the day. AH these incidental 
circumstances may be almost endlessly varied, without 
at all altering the real nature of the transaction, consid- 
ered as a combination among many Christians to effect 
a moral impression on human souls, each taking his own 
appropriate part, but all engaged together, and all res- 
ponsible directly to God. 

Such substantially, is, in all cases, the nature of the 
employment of money in spreading the gospel. One 
man by his own unaided efforts cannot give the Bible to 
a nation, or preach the gospel in a half civilized pro- 
vince, or upon an island of tawny savages, half round 
the globe. There must be a great combination to effect 
objects which are so great compared with the narrow 
limits of individual power. In this great combination, 
the various individuals' have entirely different parts to 
perform, but all are really united in heart, and all their 
separate and distinct labors tend to the accomplishment 
of one common result. Money is made use of as the 
instrument, but it is only an instrument for brnging all 
these scattered labors to bear on the proper pent. In 
the great union, too, no one is under obligation to the 
others. The account is between each individual and 
God. 

How wonderful are the results secured by the con- 
trivances and arts of life. A solitary widow, in her 
home among the distant forests, knits an hour or two at 
her lonely fireside, in order to contribute her little share 
to the spread of the gospel; her work tells on the minds 
of savages ten thousand miles from her humble dwelling. 
A farmer's children cultivate a little piece of ground in 
their father's garden, and change its products in the 
autumn for a dollar. It passes from their hands and they 
see it no more; but in a few months, the magic metal 



286 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 9. 

Examples of its power. Radiant points of piety. 

comes out in the shape of a thousand pages of the word 
of God, and lives for half a century to tell its message 
to the benighted people of some foreign land. A timid 
and retiring and fearful daughter of Zion, wishes to do 
something for her Master, and she industriously plies 
her needle during the long winter evenings of a single 
season, and a few months afterwards, in consequence of 
it, a miserable and suffering child, whom she never saw, 
in a country which she has scarcely heard of, is told 
that he can be clothed and fed and taught, through the 
instrumentality of a love which has reached half round 
the globe to bring him relief from his misery. 

It is important to be noticed here, too, that in one re- 
spect, the more remote from ourselves is the place where 
we can make any moral impression, the more valuable 
it will be: for piety, when pure, tends, from its very 
nature, to spread and propagate itself, and therefore, 
from every point among the population of this world, at 
which we can once give it a footing, we may hope it will 
extend in a wider and wider circle. It is a light, which 
will be the more universally diffused, the more its radiant 
points are multiplied. And yet no error can possibly be 
more fatal than for a Christian to suppose that he could 
atone for the want of heartfelt and efficient piety in his 
own quiet sphere, by magnificent plans of remote and 
doubtful good. The first duty of every follower of the 
Savior is, unquestionably, as we have already shown, at 
home, — in his own inmost soul; — his next, in his own 
narrow circle of personal influence. These posts must 
be guarded well by every Christian, or else piety will 
soon lose the little hold she has in the world. But 
maintaining a high standard of Christian feeling and 
action in the small circle in which the individual imme- 
diately moves, not only may not be inconsistent with 
extensive and wide-spreading benevolence, but it can 
not. Looking at a distance and planning with reference 






9.] 


THE PARTING COMMAND. 287 


Sincere motives. 


Piety begins at home. 



to remote and unseen results will not only not interfere 
with the progress of piety in the heart, but if such efforts 
are made with honest sincerity, they will be the most 
effectual means of promoting it. But then they must be 
made in the right spirit. The attempt to carry influence 
in the ways we have described, to other countries, must 
spring from honest desires to co-operate with God. It 
is this co-operation, and the moral effect at which it 
ought to aim, that must be the great stimulus to action, 
and the pleasure of being a co-worker with God must 
be the reward; or else such labors will only improve 
and strengthen the spiritual pride, or the love of osten- 
tation and display, from which they spring. 

We have thus clearly before us, the nature of the 
trust committed to the members of the Christian church 
of every name; it is a charge to spread the gospel as 
soon as possible throughout the globe. We are to con- 
sider ourselves as not our own, in any sense, but wholly 
the Lord's, and to regard it as our highest happiness to 
be permitted to identify ourselves entirely with the pro- 
gress of his cause. We are to look very watchfully and 
very faithfully within; for the best way to make religion 
spread is to keep it pure. We are to do every thing 
we can to diffuse enjoyment and to increase the influ- 
ences of holiness in the little circle in which we immedi- 
ately move; and we are to look abroad over the whole 
field which human beings occupy, saying with our hearts 
and with our hands, "Thy kingdom come." To these 
duties, we should be devoted entirely. Every thing 
should be subsidiary to them: as we can find no true 
happiness but in such a work, so we should make no 
reservations, but consecrate every thing to it, and so 
identify ourselves with it, as to have no separate inter- 
ests whatever. The share of attention which each of 
these various departments of the great work of spreading 
the gospel, should in each individual case receive, will 



283 THE CORNER-STONE [Ch. 9. 

Success certain. Important trust committed to Christians. 

of course depend upon the circumstances of each, but 
together they should monopolize the heart, and be the 
object of every hour's exertion. 

All this is very good theory, perhaps the reader may 
say, but who lives on these principles in practice? Very 
few, it must be admitted, but still there are some. The 
early Christians did, and by means of the example and 
the efforts which arose from their unreserved consecra- 
tion of themselves to the cause of God in this world, the 
principles of Christianity spread with almost inconceiv- 
able tapidity, and their progress was not checked until 
worldliness came in to corrupt the hearts of pretended 
servants of God, and to destroy all the moral power 
of piety. A long, dark night ensued, and we yet scarce- 
ly see much more than the dawn which follows it. But 
the success which has attended the faint and feeble 
efforts which the church has made, within the last 
century, show most conclusively that nothing but devot- 
ed piety in the church, and the efforts which must inevi- 
tably spring from it, is wanting, to bring back this world 
to its Maker, — and that, too, without any very long 
delay. 

It is, perhaps, one of the most mysterious features of 
divine government, that God has made human souls so 
dependent upon one another; but though it seems hard 
for those who must wait unblessed with the light of 
knowledge and pure religion, until we send it to them, 
to be left thus, apparently at the mercy of a few unfaith- 
ful pretenders to piety, we can easily see how kind to 
us, it is, for our Maker to repose in us such a trust and 
to assign to us such a duty. To give man such an en- 
terprise as this, as the object of his life, exalts and enno- 
bles him. It takes him out of the narrow circle of sel- 
fishness, and raises him at once, above the groveling 
pursuits of sin, and gives him an object worthy the 
powers of an immortal spirit. We feel, if we engage 



Ch. 9,] THE PARTING COMMAND. 289 

Sublimity of the Christian's work. - Religions discussion. 

in it, linked by a common sympathy with all that is great 
and good in the mighty universe of God; and yet, thus 
raised, thus exalted as we are, by the moral grandeur 
of the cause we are permitted to espouse, there is no 
place for pride. We feel the lofty emotions which our 
wcrk inspires, on account of the moral greatness of the 
principles which it is its object to diffuse, and the bound- 
lessness of the field over which they are to be extended, 
and the countless variety, and lofty moral and intellectual 
rank of the beings who sympathize with us, or who work 
by our side, — and the certainty of ultimate and trium- 
phant success. These are the sources of those emotions 
with which the Christian's bosom swells, when he really 
comes and gives himself wholly up to his Master's work; 
his own private and personal share in results so vast, 
dwindles into insignificance, and pride has no soil, to 
which its roots can cling. Man thus, by linking himself 
with God, and giving himself wholly to His work, enjoys 
the elevation and the happiness of greatness, and is 
saved from its dangers and sins. 

V. RELIGIOUS DISCUSSION. 

We place this title among the subjects brought be- 
fore the reader in this chapter, rather with the design 
of excluding than of including it. It is a very doubtful 
means of doing good. Skill in disputation is a weapon 
very commonly employed; far too commonly; and our 
design now is, to show its nature, and what may fairly be 
expected from it, and especially to define those limits 
and restrictions to which such efforts to act upon the 
mind ought to be subjected. Let the reader understand, 
however, while reading the remarks on this subject, that, 
like the rest of this work, they are addressed to common 
Christians, sustaining the ordinary relations and connex- 
ions of society. Learned men have sometimes devoted 
their lives to the work of placing on record the evidences 
25 



290 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 9. 

Written defences of Christianity. Early associations. Instances. 

which their researches have furnished, of the truth and 
divine authority of the Scriptures, or of the nature of 
the truths they reveal; and the works thus produced, 
have been among the strongest bulwarks of Christian 
faith. Our plan does not lead us to say any thing of 
efforts like these: it confines us to the attempts continu- 
ally made to remove religious error, by argument and 
discussion, in the common intercourse of life; attempts 
which under certain circumstances are wise and success- 
ful; under others they are far worse than useless. 

Religious discussion has its sole foundation in real or 
supposed religious error; and the nature of religious 
error is very little understood. Let us look at some of 
its sources. 

I. One great source of erroneous impressions, on all 
subjects, is the power of influences exerted in early life, 
and which are sometimes so strong as utterly to bid de- 
fiance to all argument. Every one has observed the 
permanency of these early impressions of early life in 
such cases as the following. A child was once terrified, 
when very young, by suddenly seeing a snake, as it was 
playing in the grass; and up to the age of twenty, he 
retained an unconquerable aversion to the animal, so 
that his companions used to torment him by forcing 
upon his observation, pictures of snakes, — which would 
overwhelm him in an agony of terror and suffering. 
Another was carried to see a man who was shockingly 
mangled by an accidental explosion, in blasting rocks, — 
and fifteen years did not obliterate the impression. Dur- 
ing all the years of childhood and youth, the effects of 
gunpowder, in every form, were a continual terror to 
him. Now will you endeavor to overcome such feelings 
by argument? Will you go and try to prove to these 
terrified young men, that a picture cannot bite, or that 
the flash of a little squib cannot endanger them? 



Ch. 9.] THE PARTING COMMAND 291 

Religious antipathies ; beyond the reach of argument. 

But the reader will say that these are mere antipathies , 
they are not of the nature of erroneous convictions en- 
tertained by the understanding. So is a very large pro- 
portion of the dislike to religion, and the disbelief of its 
truths, mere antipathy, and not deliberate conviction. 
The cases just adduced to illustrate it, are certainly 
strong ones; but every man who will pause a moment to 
reflect, must see that a child, brought up under the influ- 
ence of such associations as are in many families con- 
nected with the religious opinions of those who disagree 
with them, must inevitably, if human nature is consistent 
with itself, form such an antipathy. It may have men, 
or it may have opinions, for its objects, but in either 
case argument, as a corrective, would be utterly thrown 
away. It would not only be entirely insufficient to pro- 
duce a change, but it would scarcely have any tendency 
to do it. 

A sufficient allowance is not made for this by the oppo- 
site parties in a religious controversy. If one generation 
takes sides violently, on any question, they inevitably 
entail the quarrel. Their children have scarcely the 
opportunity to judge for themselves. The laws of the 
human mind almost compel them to feel as their fathers 
felt; for it becomes in such cases, a matter of feeling 
rather than opinion. No one, therefore, ought ever to 
cherish a harsh or an unkind thought towards any one, on 
account of his religious errors, if his father led the way. 

This influence of early associations has more power 
than all other causes put together, in the formation of 
religious opinions. The children of Mahometans be- 
come Mahometans themselves, without arguments in 
favor of the Prophet; and in the Christian world, religious 
opinions are hereditary, and pass down with exceptions 
comparatively few and rare, from father to son; so that 
Popery, and Protestantism, Episcopacy and Dissent, 
and Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist opinions, oc- 



292 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 9, 



Opinions hereditary. Irreligion the cause of error. 

cupy, in the main, the same ground, from generation to 
generation. It is true, indeed, that argument has some- 
thing to do with this, for though every faith has its de- 
fenders, to which all have access, still each child hears 
chiefly the voice of the one which its father chooses for 
it. But, notwithstanding this, every intelligent observer 
of the human mind, and especially of the habits and 
susceptibilities of childhood, will at once admit, that 
other influences than those of argument are the efficient 
ones, in the production of these almost universal effects. 
Let no one infer from these undeniable facts, that 
men are not accountable for the exercise of their reason 
in respect to their relations to God. They are account- 
able. The fact that men follow on so blindly after their 
parents in this, more than in any other case, is an indi- 
cation of the cold indifference of the human heart to its 
religious duty. Parents cannot control their children's 
opinions and preferences, on other points, so completely; 
and tbey could not here, were not the heart so cold, so 
indifferent, so benumbed in respect to God. When the 
conscience is aroused, these chains are immediately 
broken, and the soul goes free to think for itself, and to 
throw away its shackles for ever. It may escape slowly 
from their thraldom, but escape it will, if any real peni- 
tence and any real love to God can find a place in the 
heart. So that what is justly to be inferred from these 
views, is not that men who are in error, are innocent, but 
that they are no more guilty than those who believe the 
truth, and yet live in sin. A thousand children, growing 
up without God, are all guilty for thus living in disobe- 
dience to his will; but if they do thus live, the question 
of their religious belief is not of much consequence as 
an indication of their real characters. Their belief is 
probably almost a matter of mere accident; so that, as 
to their characters, it makes no great difference who is 
right, and who wrong in theory. Their guilt consists in 



Ch. 9.] THE PARTING COMMAND. 293 

One great distinction. Influence of feelings. Instances. 

their impenitence, which is common to them all, not in 
their errors, in which, from accidental circumstances, 
each may differ from the rest. 

When we look around therefore upon society, we 
should make one great distinction in estimating human 
character, and that is, between those who love God, and 
those who love him not; and we must remember that 
from the very fact that the latter class do not love duty, 
they will make no honest effort, themselves, to learn 
what it is. They all drink in whatever is offered to them 
in childhood. Some are right, and some are wrong, 
but, as we have seen, accident has been most instru- 
mental in deciding in each case, and ungodliness is the 
common foundation on which all stand. Induce them 
to abandon sin, and to return to God, in any respect, and 
their eyes will be opened. Act upon the heart first, and 
the intellect will rectify itself afterwards; though it will 
be by steps too hesitating and slow for our impatience 
to tolerate, unless we have considered, more attentively 
than most persons have, the extreme and almost uncon- 
querable reluctance with which the power of early asso- 
ciations relinquishes its hold. 

The first source of religious error then, is, these 
associations of early childhood, which reasoning never 
formed, and whieh she is utterly incompetent to over- 
throw. 

2. Another very common source of error on all sub- 
jects, and especially in religion, is the bias of mind 
produced by the influence of the feelings. The danger 
of such a bias is universally understood in common life, 
and is guarded against, in many cases, with great care. 
Whenever a contention arises between two individuals, 
the friends and connexions of the respective combatants, 
with the same facts before their eyes, and guided profes- 
sedly by the same principles of right and wrong, form 
25* 



294 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 9. 

The contention. The consumptive patient. Bias in religion, 

directly opposite opinions, and each party adheres to the 
views which mere feeling has produced, with inflexible 
pertinacity. So .when any new speculation or plan of 
improvement is agitated in any community, each man 
will take sides on the question, just as his interests would 
be affected by the results. In the former of these cases, 
it is personal attachment, in the latter, pecuniary interest 
which constitutes the bias; but any other emotion may 
produce the same effect. We may mention one other 
case, which, though common, is melancholy and affect- 
ing in the extreme. How often will an unhappy man, 
conscious that he is unprepared for death, sink into the 
last stages of a lingering disease, steeled against all 
sense of the danger which he does not wish to see. His 
hectic cheek, and gradually sinking powers might give 
him most certain evidence that he is drawing near to the 
grave; but he shuts his eyes to every indication of his 
danger. Just because he wishes and hopes to be re- 
stored to health, he resolutely persists in believing that 
restoration is before him. The delusion, a very happy 
one, so far as its exhilarating power tends to sustain 
him under his final sufferings, but very melancholy in 
its tendency to keep him from finding peace with God, 
— clings to him to the last; and he sinks under the very 
hand of death, with an unwavering butjaaseless confi- 
dence that health and happiness are soon to return. 

This tendency of the human mind is universally 
known; every man, in consequence of it, almost in- 
stinctively distrusts the opinions of others, where their 
feelings or their interests are involved in the question; 
and a wise man, under such circumstances, will distrust 
his own. 

Perhaps there is no class of subjects on which men 
are more in danger from this source, than those connect- 
ed with religion. The various interpretations which are 
given to the declarations of the Bible, alter very con- 



Ch. 9.] THE PARTIxNG COMMAND 295 

Sources of bias. Remedies. Inefficacy of argument. 

siderably their force, in respect to the degree of res- 
traint they impose upon human desires, and to the 
amount of sacrifice which they require in the service 
of God. A great reason, therefore, in many cases, why 
men cannot see the evidence of a particular truth, is the 
practical consequences which flow from it. We see this 
very clearly in those cases where certain abstract views 
of duty relate more or less directly to the common pur- 
suits of life, so as to interfere with the business of one 
man, while they leave that of another untouched. The 
former will make great opposition to that which, in the 
view of the other, is most obviously and unquestionably 
true. Now% some such cases, where great and obvious 
principles of common morality are concerned, the proper 
course undoubtedly is, to throw such a blaze of light 
upon the subject, as to force the guilty perseverer in sin 
to see his duty. In regard, however, to what are more 
strictly called religious truths, mere argument in such 
cases is of little avail. 

A man for instance has made up his mind to live in 
sin, and perhaps in vice. He does what he knows to be 
wrong from day to day, though conscience, not wholly 
silenced, murmurs feebly in those hours of solitude which 
he cannot wholly avoid, — warning him of the danger of 
a judgment to come. He at length is almost accident- 
ally told, that there is no future retribution. His mind 
springs spontaneously into the belief of it. He needs 
no argument. He may indeed listen to a few reasons, 
for the purpose of laying them up as weapons of defence, 
but his own belief is, after all, founded on his feelings. 
Now argument and discussion with such a man will or- 
dinarily do no good. While he appears to listen to you 
he is only planning his own reply. Reasoning has not 
placed him in his entrenchment, and reasoning cannot 
drive him from it. Must he then, the reader may ask, 
be left hopelessly? No. The truth has an ally and an 



206 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 9. 

Hard to acknowledge error. The remedy. 

advocate in his own breast, which, though he may have 
silenced it, he cannot destroy; and our hope of success 
is in making its warning voice heard again. Bring duly 
before him; lead him to see that he disobeys God, and 
that his expected impunity, can be no excuse for sin. 
If he can but see that he is a sinner, he will go to the 
Bible, and that will set him right about the future con- 
sequences of sin. 

The cases we have considered thus far, are those in 
which the mind is led to reject what is true, because the 
truth is, in itself, unpleasant, on account of the practical 
duties which rest upon it; but the mind is very often 
blinded in a little different way. Men are often kept in 
error, not because they have any special objection to the 
truth itself, or to the practical consequences, in general, 
which result from it, but because they are unwilling to 
acknowledge that they have been in the wrong. A 
man who has always been on one side, and is so univer- 
sally regarded, cannot admit that he has been mistaken, 
without feeling mortification himself, and exciting the 
ill-will of others. Light however comes in, which he 
secretly perceives is sufficient to show him that he has 
been wrong; but he turns his eye away from it, because 
he instinctively feels what must inevitably follow from its 
admission. 

These and similar causes act so universally, that the 
power of reasoning and argument in changing the relig- 
ious opinions of men is exceedingly circumscribed. If 
men were willing to perceive the truth, we should have 
nothing to do, but to prove to them what it is; but proof 
is so abundant every where, that it will of course come 
to the soul as fast as it is ready and willing to receive it. 
The first thing then, generally, is to get men into the 
path of duty. They all have truth enough to enlighten 
the beginning of it, — and more light will certainly shine 
upon it, as they go on. 






Ch. 9.] THE PARTING COMMAND. 297 

Useless disputes. Language misunderstood. Human character. 

There is, however, a vast amount of useless discussion 
arising from religious differences, which the foregoing 
heads of remark will not explain. They who are in 
some degree willing to abandon sin, and do their duty, 
still see many subjects in very different lights, and 
become involved in endless disputes respecting them. 
Some of the more common sources of such profitless con- 
troversies come next in our enumeration. 



3. Disputes founded on difference in the understand- 
ing of. language. Take for example, human character. 
There is no field more open to human observation than 
this, and perhaps there are few subjects in regard to 
the facts of which, men are more universally agreed; and 
yet there is scarcely any one which has given rise to 
more endless discussions. 

In their practical dealings with mankind, it is plain that 
intelligent men of all parties take substantially the same 
views of human conduct and character. They who, in 
the argument, have the lowest views of the natural char- 
acter, are not more suspicious or severe in practice than 
others; and those who speak most highly of the native 
purity and the spontaneous virtues of the human heart, 
are not thrown off their guard by their theories. As to 
the facts, there is, and there can be, scarcely any disa- 
greement. We all know how men think and feel about 
God, and on what principles they act in relation to one 
another. No company of bank directors, or board of 
managers, or cabinet council, probably ever differed 
very seriously in respect to the success of proposed 
measures, on account of the difference of their views in 
respect to the character and the tendencies of human 
nature. They may belong to very different denomina- 
tions, and may have expressed their views in theory, in 
conflicting language, but when they leave theory, they 
have no difficulty about the facts. 



298 THE C0RNER-ST0XE. 


[Ch. 9. 


Nature of disputes about it. 


Misunderstanding. 



I speak of course here of questions about human char- 
acter as it is, not about the feelings with which God 
regards it; this is evidently a different point, and one in 
which disagreement would not necessarily affect the 
practice, in the common business of life. But any real 
difference in respect to the actual extent of the depravity 
of the heart would affect this practice. Now notwith- 
standing all the disputes with which mankind have been 
agitated on this subject, there is harmony, when they 
come to act. The disputes are at once forgotten; men 
of the most opposite theoretical views, work sjde by 
side, differing in nothing except that they who have had 
the most extensive experience, are most completely on 
their guard. 

Now how happens it that under such circumstances, 
there should be such a perpetual dispute when there can 
be after all but little real disagreement? Of course, I 
refer here, as has been remarked before, to a disagree- 
ment about the actual principles by which human nature 
is controlled, and not to the view which God takes of 
these principles. How can there be such a disagreement ? 
The explanation is that the terms employed in the discus- 
sion convey to different individuals very different ideas. 
One party understands the language used by the other, 
in describing human character, as implying moral per- 
version so complete, that the heart would take delight in 
promoting suffering, and love moral evil in all cases, on its 
own account, rather than moral good. They would expect 
to see it hating one being because he is merciful, and 
another because he is faithful and true. They would 
expect men with such characters as they suppose the 
language iu question to imply, would abhor justice and 
mercy, and benevolence, not in those particular cases 
merely where the operation of these principles come 
into collision with their own interest, but in the abstract, 
and universally. They would expect to see them ap- 






Ch. 9.] THE PARTING COMMAND. 299 

Dispute grounded on misunderstanding. Ambiguity of common words. 

plauding cruelty, and admiring blaok ingratitude, and 
canning their principles out into practice by devising 
misery for all around them, merely for the pleasure of 
witnessing it, and bestowing a double share of their 
malignity upon those who had been most friendly to 
them. 

Such a character as this is what one class of persons 
understand by the language used, and in the dispute 
they merely maintain that this is not the actual charac- 
ter of mankind. Nobody believes it is, but the dispute 
goes on, one party contending for one view and the 
other opposing not the opinion of their antagonist but 
a totally different one; and which seems equally pre- 
posterous to both. If they should come to an explana- 
tion, the chief question would be, by what terms they 
should describe what every body sees, and what their 
practice proves that they see substantially alike. 

When we come even to such terms as can, will, free- 
dom, punishment, unity, person, sin, affections and a hun- 
dred others, which are the perpetual topics of religious 
controversy, though they are plain and explicit enough in 
common use, they have various shades of signification 
as terms in a metaphysical argument. These 'shades 
cannot be defined; they elude all attempts to fix them, 
and yet they very seriously affect the views a man will 
form of the propositions into which they enter; and 
many and many a time, controversialists have found, 
after a long discussion, that they had misunderstood each 
other from the beginning. 

Take for instance the first word of the foregoing list. 
It seems a very simple word, and one that is very gen- 
erally understood. So it is, as far as is necessary for 
popular use. But any person may convince himself that 
when used for other purposes, it is not understood alike, 
by trying this experiment. On some occasion, when ten 
or twenty or more individuals, not accustomed to meta- 



300 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 9. 

Proposed question, and dispute arising from it. 

physical speculations, are together, propose this ques- 
tion. " Can any one of the company go and lie down 
in a burning fire? Considering all the circumstances of 
the case, the nature of fire, his dislike of pain, his sound 
mind, — considering all these circumstances, can he do 
it?" After pausing a moment for reflection, so that each 
individual can form an independent judgment, call for 
a simple answer, — ay, or no. The company will proba- 
bly be about equally divided. The larger it is, the more 
nearly equal generally will be the division. If, now, the 
individuals are allowed to discuss the question, each 
person presenting the view which guided his own vote, 
and then the question is put again, the diversity of opin- 
ion will still remain, and in ordinary cases they would 
never come to an agreement. And yet there is no dif- 
ference of opinion about the facts. Every one knows 
perfectly well what is the actual fact, as to the power of 
an individual in respect to such a case. The whole ap- 
parent diversity is produced by different ideas as to the 
precise metaphysical signification of the little word can. 
Practised minds would have no difficulty in such a case; 
they would immediately define the word, and give two 
answers according to the two significations, and they 
would be unanimous. 

Now no class of disputes are more common than end- 
less discussions which are precisely of such a character 
as this would be. The danger is understood by scholars 
who are at all conversant with the nature of such inquiries, 
and they make very special efforts, though they are often 
ineffectual, to guard against it. But the mass of man- 
kind are very imperfectly aware of this source of difficul- 
ty, and they involve themselves in endless disputes, the 
parties calling things by different names, and each com- 
batant astonished at the stupidity and obstinacy of the 
other, in refusing to see what is so perfectly plain. 



Ch. 9. J THE PARTING COMMAND 301 

Unimportant questions. Pride and self conceit. 



4. Another source of endless and fruitless discussions, 
is disputing about questions which can be of no practical 
consequence, however they may be decided. Such as 
the origin of sin. the state of the soul between death 
and the resurrection, the salvation of infants, the pre- 
cise metaphysical relationship of the Son to the Father. 
We have said thpy are of no practical consequence; of 
course an ingenious reasoner can contrive to connect 
practical consequences with any subject whatever, and 
in his zeal he will exaggerate the importance of the 
connexion. In fact every subject in the moral world is 
more or less connected with every other one: nothing 
stands out entirely detached and isolated, and conse- 
quently a question which its arguers will admit to be 
merely a theoretical one, will never be found. 

It would of course be absurd to condemn all discussion 
of such points a* the above, and others similar to them. 
The calm philosophical consideration of such questions 
is perfectly proper, it is bringing them into the field of 
religious truth, and making them the means of religious 
divisions, — each party jealous and suspicious of those 
who think differently from himself, — and leaving the 
weightier matters of judgment, mercy and faith, to wran- 
gle about differences which can do at most, but little 
harm: — this is the spirit which it is our object to con- 
demn. 

5. The last source of religious error, and useless re- 
ligious disputes which we shall mention, is the pride and 
self-conceit which keeps men from realizing that there 
is or can be a'ny subject which is actually beyond the 
reach of their powers. Men will indeed admit this, in 
the abstract, but then they evince the insincerity of 
such an acknowledgment, by having a distinct and well- 
defined theory, on every subject which can be brought 
before them. 

26 



30& THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 9. 

The limited powers of the human mind. Fruitlessness of controversies. 

But the truth is, and every mind which really reflects 
on its condition and its powers must perceive it, that the 
beams of reason and revelation, which shine upon our 
path, afford a distinct illumination only for those objects 
which are immediately around us, and with which we 
have a direct and practical connexion. Beyond this 
circle, and it is a much narrower one than is perhaps 
generally supposed, there is a region of doubt and dark- 
ness, into which the human mind will endeavor in vain 
to extend its vision. In some cases, we attempt to 
define accurately, what from its very nature, is not 
susceptible of accurate definition: we assign exact bound- 
aries in our conceptions, when the subject does not admit 
of them in reality. We make sweeping assertions, dis- 
posing of whole classes of subjects at a word, or we take 
a general principle which is perhaps true in the main, 
and carry it out to extremes, to which it cannot fairly 
extend. We do this either from the influence of an 
almost universal tendency of the human mind to love 
sweeping generalities, or else because it is troublesome 
to pause, and reflect, and ascertain exceptions. In fact, 
a reflecting man will often detect himself believing a 
proposition merely because, when expressed, it sounds 
antithetic and striking, or because it is comprehensive 
and distinct, and, right or wrong, presents a convenient 
solution for whole classes of difficulties. The human 
mind will, in a word, run into almost any belief, by which 
it may be saved the labor of patient thought, and at the 
same time avoid the mortification of acknowledging its 
ignorance. 

From these views of the origin and nature of religious 
error, and the effect of argument and discussion as a 
means of removing it, it seems to be pretty clear that 
those endless disputes and controversies which are per- 
petually springing up in the common walks of life, by 



Ch. 9.] THE PARTING COMMAND. 303 

The test of the truth. Sin a disease. Efficacy of remedies. 

which the peace, and harmony of families and villages are 
so often destroyed, are labor spent in vain. The Chris- 
tian endeavors to reason his brother Christian or his 
worldly neighbor out of his errors, and begins, perhaps, 
with honest motives, and certainly with sanguine hopes 
of success. But he finds that however exclusively he 
may imagine the truth to be on one side, there may be 
talking on both, and he soon becomes irritated by formi- 
dable opposition, when he expected an immediate sur- 
render. He soon becomes excited, and forgetting the 
spiritual value of the truth, he contends for victory in the 
contest, and if he had any right feeling at the beginning, 
it is all gone before the conversation is closed. 

The best way for private Christians to prove the truth, 
is to let it exercise its whole power upon their own 
hearts, and then to exhibit its fruits. Try to promote 
the happiness, and to improve the hearts and lives of 
those around you, and you will evince the efficacy, and 
the value, and the truth of the opinions you hold, better 
than in any other way. If a pestilential disease were 
raging in a city, and if the community were divided in 
regard to the method of cure, how preposterous would it 
be for those who are well, to leave the sick and suffering, 
and suspend all active efforts, and waste their time in 
disputes about the nature of the vital powers, — the 
character of the disease, — and the operation of the 
various remedies. It would be absurd; but let each one 
go and try his own plan, and the success of the right one, 
will secure its universal adoption; and that too, with a 
rapidity which will be just in proportion to the degree in 
which all disputing on the subject is avoided. In the 
same manner, success in turning men to holiness is the 
great criterion of religious truth. It must be so; the 
world is full of hearts alienated from God, and enslaved 
to sin: and nothing but true religion can break these 
chains, and bring back the wanderer to pardon and 



30 4 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 



Moral power of the truth. The mean? of propagating it. 

happiness. Let the advocates then, of every system of 
religious truth, go abroad among mankind, and try their 
remedies. That which is really from Heaven must suc- 
ceed, and success must decide its triumph. 

In fact the little progress which religion is making in 
the world is made in this way. Disputes on all subjects 
which are involved in real difficulty, generally result in 
a division of the auditors into parties, proportioned, pretty 
nearly, to the abilities of the combatant*; and in religion 
there is a bias, which is altogether on the wrong side; 
discussion, therefore, here will be peculiarly uncertain in 
its results. It is the visible moral effect o^ the truth, 
which really sustains its influence in this world. It is 
moral power, so evident and so irresistible, which enables 
pure Christianity to stand h3r ground; and everything 
wmich diminishes this, or limits the sphere of its influence, 
or draws off the attention of men from it. — every thing 
of this kind, retards most directly and most powerfully 
the progress of the Savior's cause. Let every class of 
Christians then, who think they love the truth, not waste 
their time in disputing with their neighbors, but cherish 
the pure spirit of piety in their hearts, and cultivate in 
themselves and in all around them, its genuine and happy 
fruits. The Christian's rule of influence is not to en- 
deavor to establish the truth in the human intellect by the 
power of subtle disputation; but "by manifestation, of the 
truth, to commend themselves to every man's conscience, 
in the sight of God." In other words, we must bring 
piety forward; its nature and tendencies must be made 
to appear in this world, and to stand out in bold and 
striking relief, among the prevailing miseries and sins 
But this must be done, too, with the constant conviction 
that the conscience is the great avenue by which it is 
to find access to the human heart, if it is admitted at 
all. 



Ch. 10.J THE PARTING PROMISE. 305 

The command and the promise. The Savior's presence. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE PARTING PROMISE, 

OR THE INFLUENCES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

u Lo I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." 

At the time of our Savior's crucifixion, any one who 
should have looked abroad at the condition and char- 
acter of mankind, would have pronounced the attempt 
which the twelve disciples were about to make, the most 
wild and impracticable scheme which the human heart 
could devise. Jesus knew, when he commanded his 
followers to engage in such an enterprise, that they 
would need help. He coupled therefore a promise to 
his command, — the one as remarkable as the other. 

The Savior's presence with his followers assists them 
in their work, undoubtedly, in several ways. It cheers 
and sustains them. It gives them guidance and direction 
in difficulty and doubt; and the feeling that they are 
always with their leader, enjoying his presence and 
sympathy, gives devoted and honest Christians a support 
in difficulty, and trial, and affliction, which nothing else 
could afford. 

But Jesus had often said before, that men, when 
turned from sin, where turned by influences from above, 
which influences he was to send down from the Father. 
We cannot therefore doubt that in this his parting prom- 
ise, he referred in part at least to the co-operation which 
he should himself render them, in all their efforts to save 
souls. The disciples understood this, and the first tri- 
umphs of Christianity were, in a simple but beautiful 
manner, ascribed to him: "And the Lord added to the 
church daily, such as should be saved," 
o 6 # 






306 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 10 

Proofs of it. Saul. Difficulties of the subject. 

Their Master, too, gave the disciples an early and most 
signal proof that he remembered his promise, and was 
able to fulfil it, by changing Saul, their bitterest and 
most powerful foe, to their most devoted and most efficient 
friend. The apostle always attributed his conversion to 
the direct interposition of his Savior; and with such 
proofs as the early Christians thus had, that a divine and 
unwonted influence was exerted upon human hearts, in 
connexion with their efforts, they could not but take 
courage, and press on in a cause, which, without such 
aid, must have been very soon abandoned. 

We have the same evidence now, as I intend to 
show in this chapter, by a narrative of facts, — such as 
are in substance very common in modern times, and 
which prove that the enterprise of bringing the world 
back to God is not a hopeless one. The narrative will 
show too that the same kind of aid, so indispensable to 
success in such a cause as this, is still rendered. Before 
coming to it, however, a few considerations respecting 
the general subject must first be offered. 

There are certainly great difficulties in connexion with 
the truth that whenever men turn away from their sins 
and enter God's service, it is through spiritual life which 
he awakens in the soul. Into these difficulties, we do not 
now propose to enter. We feel and know that men are 
free and accountable; the Bible most explicitly states, 
too, that all holy desires in the human heart come from 
God. If however, the question is raised how holy feel- 
ing can be the spontaneous movement of the moral 
agent which exercises it. and yet be the gift of God, we 
may lose ourselves in boundless perplexities, and return 
from the fruitless pursuits more dissatisfied than ever. 
The difficulty is, however, in the subject, rather than in 
the truth; that is, it appertains to a whole field of thought, 
and not to one particular proposition. It is difficult for 
us to understand how a being can be created at all, with- 



Ch. 10.] THE PARTING PROMISE. 307 

Subject obscure. Plausible reasoning not to be relied upon. 

out having his character determined by the act of crea- 
tion. If the question, Avhat his first moral acts shall be, 
is determined by any thing, it would seem that it must be 
by something in his moral constitution, as it was framed 
by his Maker; and if it is not determined by any thing, it 
must, one would think, be left a matter of pure accident; 
and that which is matter of pure accident, cannot be of 
a moral nature. We might thus, make out a very re- 
spectable argument a priori, that a free moral agent can- 
not be .created; as creating power, unless it leaves the 
moral character a matter of mere accident, must do 
something to determine it, in which case it would seem 
that it is itself responsible for the acts which follow. 

It will of course be understood that we do not offer 
this argument as a sound one, — but only as plausible 
reasoning which is not to be relied upon, on account of 
the obscurity and difficulty of the whole subject. Take 
for instance the question suggested by the last lines of 
the preceding paragraph; — can creative power really 
determine the character of the being it forms, without 
being itself morally responsible for that character. It 
is a question which might be disputed by philosophers 
for ages, without victory on either side. The difficulty 
is in the subject. Wherever we approach it, all is ob- 
scurity and doubt. We cannot trust our reasonings, nor 
believe our conclusions. 

There is no objection, perhaps, to an occasional dis- 
cussion of such points, by Christians, if it is done with 
the same feelings with which we should investigate any 
other difficult question, in metaphysics or philosophy: 
but we must not bring them into the region of religious 
feeling and duty, and press upon our fellow Christians 
the theories which we may ourselves be led to form. 
What human minds see so imperfectly, they never see 
alike. On such subjects they cannot agree. What is 
substance to one, is shadow to another: and a thought 



308 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 10 



Ambiguity of language. Facts are plain ; the theory obscure. 

which, from one point of view, has one set of aspects 
and relations, from a different one has another, totally 
diverse. Besides, in the higher regions of metaphysical 
investigation, words, as a medium of communication, if 
not as a medium of thought, lose their signincancy, and 
thus even the conceptions which we have, though per- 
haps clear in the mind, cannot be clearly expressed. In 
fact, the human intellect, when it roams away into the 
profound recesses of metaphysical philosophy, can lead 
on other minds, but a very little way. Intercourse by 
language very soon fails. We endeavor, by nice defini- 
tion, and careful etymological discrimination, to lead it 
on as far as it will go; and it is often long before its 
growing inadequacy is understood and felt. It must, 
however, at last be abandoned, and the mind then, if it 
advances at all, must advance alone and silently. It 
perceives truths, or at least, it has conceptions which it 
cannot communicate, and when at last, bewildered in 
the increasing perplexity of the labyrinth, it gives over, 
and returns, it can never convey to another mind any 
precise idea of the point to which it had gone. 

Now nearly all the disputes on this subject which have 
agitated the church, lie in that doubtful region, where 
the mind can see but dimly, and must report even more 
dimly than it sees. Language has lost its power, though 
he who uses it does not perceive its weakness, and 
hence the discussions are made up almost entirely of 
explanations and corrections, and definitions of terms, 
and charges of misunderstanding or misrepresentation. 
We had better leave the whole ground. Believe what 
the Bible says, and look at the confirmations of it af- 
forded so abundantly by experience, and leave discus- 
sions of theories for a future day. 

We come then to the facts in the case, which are, 
that men will not turn away trom sin, and begin, with 
broken-hearted penitence, to serve God, without his 



Ch. 10.J THE PARTING PROMISE. 309 

Moral dependence on God. Waiting for the Spirit. 



aid. There is no way of inducing them to do it. You 
can bring clearly before them the obligations which 
they are under to God, but if they still prefer the world 
and sin, what more can you do? You can exhibit the 
moral beauty of gratitude, but if you exhibit it to a heart 
naturally ungrateful, if such an one should be found, 
what good would it do? You cannot prove that if a man 
has received kindness from another he ought to show 
kindness in return. If the person you address does not 
perceive it, at once, there is nothing to be said about 
it; argument would be utterly unavailing. In the same 
manner, if he sees it, but does ~ot feel it, you cannot 
alter his heart by reasoning. 

There is a mistaken view of mai. 's moral dependence, 
which in some cases produces one very sad effect. Per- 
sons sometimes think that the power to renew them is so 
completely in their Maker's hands that they must wait 
for him to exercise it. They seem to have the impres- 
sion that God will repent for them, and they are looking 
to him to do it. Now this is very evidently absurd. 
The Holy Spirit will never repent far you; no, never. 
From the very nature of things he never can. You must 
repent yourself, though if you do it, it will be in the exer- 
cise of spiritual power supplied from on high. 

The absurdity of such passive waiting to be acted upon, 
may be well illustrated, by some of the miracles of the 
Savior. A man, for example, comes to Jesus Christ 
with a withered hand. It hangs lifeless by his side. It 
is insensible and motionless, a symbol of the moral con- 
dition of the human soul when dead in sin. He asks 
help from the Savior; and what is the reply? " Stretch 
forth thine hand." 

" How can I stretch it forth? Its utter lifelessness," 
might the poor patient say to the Savior, " is the very 
reason why I bring it to thee. I cannot stretch it forth 
unless its life and power are previouslv restored," 



310 THE C0R_\ER-ST0XE. [Ch. 10. 

The man with a withered hand. Faults and errors. 

" Stretch forth thine hand," is however the command, 
and though we might gather innumerable theoretical diffi- 
culties about such a command, there are none in prac- 
tice. The patient obeys. The very instant of exertion 
on his part, is the very instant of returning life and 
power. His hand obeys his volition. It obeys it how- 
ever by a power which a supernatural interposition sup- 
plied. He could not have raised his arm without external 
aid, and on the other hand, he could not have external 
aid, without making the effort. 

Xow every person, who, after understanding God's 
commands, defers obedience until the power of the Holy 
Spirit is exerted upon him to lead him to do it, seems to 
be almost precisely in the condition of the man with thfc 
withered hand, if, after the Savior had directed him to 
stretch it forth, he had stood waiting, before he made 
the effort, to have life restored to it. He must feel, he 
thinks, the blood beginning to circulate, and sensation 
returning, before he has any thing to do ! His arm would, 
in such a case, remain withered for ever. So the soul 
which has sunk into the lethargy of waiting for God's 
Spirit, may wait for ever in vain. Man must repent, him- 
self. He must love God, himself; -he must abandon sin, 
himself God will not do the work for us; he will only 
infuse the spiritual vitality by which it is to be done. 

It is melancholy to observe that when the word of 
God, or the obvious principles of duty, mark out a 
straight course, man will find devious and wandering 
paths, turning off to the right and to the left, — any way, 
just to avoid the narrow path of duty. One r.lass of 
persons, interested, or professing to be interested, in the 
question of their salvation, fold their arms in quiet inac- 
tion, waiting, as they say, for influences from above to 
lead them to their duty. Others, aroused perhaps from 
this condition, go zealously to work to purchase their 
salvation, — to fabricate repentance and faith by their 






Ch. 10.] THE PARTING PROMISE 311 

We must be born again. Influences of the Spirit. 

own power alone. Self-confident, self-sufficient, and 
filled with spiritual pride, they think to turn their own 
hearts to God, without receiving any new life from him. 
Brought back from their wanderings upon one side of 
the truth, away they go immediately upon the other, in 
an error as dangerous, nay as fatal as before. For, after 
all, it makes little difference whether a man gives up the 
kingdom of heaven altogether, or attempts to enter it 
without being born again. In either case, he continues 
dead in trespasses and sins. The difference is, that, in 
the one, he lies in acknowledged lifelessness, — in the 
other, his cadaverous form is clothed in the garments, 
and placed in the attitude of life; but stiffened limbs, and 
a countenance of death-like expression betray its case. 
No, we must he bom again. 

The modes and forms which moral renewal by the 
Holy Spirit assumes in the soul are innumerable; and 
the truths which seem to be employed as the means of 
affecting the heart, are almost equally varied. All that 
we know, is, that while the mass of mankind go on obsti- 
nately in sin, individuals of every possible character, and 
in every varietyof circumstances, do repent and return to 
duty. Sometimes it is the little child, knowing scarcely 
any thing but that it has a Maker; again, it is some 
hardened and violent opposer of God and religion, who 
throws down his weapons and comes humbled and 
broken-hearted to the foot^of the cross. Sometimes one 
well instructed in religious truth, and faithfully warned 
of guilt and of danger, will, after years of indifference 
and thoughtlessness, suddenly relent and come to the 
Savior, and at others whole communities will be aroused; 
and though they could before be affected by no exhort- 
ations, and no remonstrances, they will now suddenly 
awake, and flock in crowds to the service of God. The 
Holy Spirit can operate any where and with any means. 
Sometimes he whispers gentlv to a single one, in soli- 



312 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 10 



Various effects. The narrative. Such 



cases common 



tude, — sometimes he spreads solemnity over the crowded 
meeting. To-day he gives meaning and power to the 
Scriptures, as the reader, at his lonely fireside, seeks 
their guidance, — to-morrow he indites a prayer, or gives 
to reflections which have been utterly unable to affect 
the heart, power to overwhelm it with emotion, brings 
up sins which have been looked upon with cold uncon- 
cern, in their true character, and draws them out before 
the soul in gloomy array. He awakens conscience, and 
quickens the memory; he disrobes the world of her allur- 
ing garb, and gives a spiritual meaning to the events 
of Providence. Life, seen by the light which he 
brings into the soul, wears its own serious and sober 
hue; eternity rises, — its distant realities draw near, — 
doubts and uncertainties vanish, and the soul to which 
this heavenly messenger is sent, walks forth redeemed 
from sin, purified from pollution, set free from its chains, 
— its powers expanded and its aims and views enlarg- 
ed; prepared henceforth to be a holy and happy child 
of God, instead of the degraded and polluted child of sin. 
Now it is aid like this that Christians are to look for, 
when they endeavor to promote the cause of religion in 
the world, and it seems to be rendered just in proportion 
to the humility and sincerity and devotedness of the 
efforts which are made. Bad feelings and sinister aims 
are so often mingled with Christian zeal, and so often 
assume its form, that in ordinary cases, we have a sad 
mixture of the fruits of genuine piety, with those of 
hypocrisy and sin. There is, however, such a thing as 
moral renewal, by means of unwonted influences upon 
human hearts, which the ordinary operations of the mind 
cannot explain. The following narrative is not an ac- 
count of a very uncommon case. It is a specimen of 
hundreds which have occurred within a few years in 
our land, and which have been fully equal to this in its 
results. An actual case like this, narrated particularly, 



Ch. 10.] THE PARTING PROMISE. 3l3 

A New-England College. The buildings. The classes, 

may give the reader a more vivid conception of what 
co-operation from above, Christians may expect, than 
general remarks upon the promises which the scriptures 
contain. Such cases certainly afford a striking com- 
mentary upon the Savior's words, " Lo I am with you 
alway, even unto the end of the world." 

THE COLLEGE REVIVAL. 

As probably but few of my readers have had oppor- 
tunity to form any acquaintance with the interior of a 
New-England College, or with the nature of college 
life, I must commence my narrative with a description 
of the place in which the scene is laid. 

The appearance which a New-England College ex- 
hibits to a traveller, is that of a group of large brick 
buildings, generally a hundred feet long, and four stories 
high, standing usually upon an eminence, or upon a level 
plain, on the borders of some quiet country village. 
The buildings are connected with one another., and ap- 
proached from various directions, by gravelled walks, 
and perhaps, ornamented with shrubbery; and cue among 
them, distinguished usually by a form somewhat different 
from the rest, and surmounted by a sort of cupola, 
indicates that the whole constitute some public establish- 
ment. 

A fresh admission of students takes place in the au- 
tumn of each year, consisting ordinarily of young men, 
from twenty years of age, down to thirteen. These stu- 
dents are united into one class, and commence one 
course of study, which extends through a period of fout 
years. During these four years, there will of course be 
three more admissions, making four classes, and only 
four in the institution at the same time. 

The large buildings I have alluded to, are divided into 

rooms, as nearly alike as possible; — eight usually upon 

a floor, and consequently, thirty-two in all. Each one 

of these rooms is assigned to two of the members of the 

27 



314 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 10. 

The first day. Temptations. Varieties of character. 

class admitted, and it is to be for one year their home. 
The first day of the collegiate year, those portions of the 
building assigned to the Freshmen, as the last admitted 
are called, exhibit a scene of very peculiar and striking 
character. The bustle of preparation, — moving in, and 
putting up furniture, — the interest excited by the nov- 
elty of the mode of life they are now to lead, and the 
lingering recollections of home, left perhaps for ever, — 
resolutions of diligence and fidelity in the course of study 
before them, — and the various other feelings excited by 
the new and strange faces and objects around, all con- 
spire to give to the Freshman's first day at college, 
a marked and striking character, and to fill it with new 
and strong emotions which he never can forget. 

In every class there is a large number of youthful 
members, whose parents' situation in life is such, that 
they have been the objects of constant attention from 
infancy, and have accordingly been early fitted for col- 
lege, and sent to the institution before their minds are 
sufficiently matured, and their moral principles firmly 
enough established, to resist the new and strong tempta- 
tions to which they are henceforth to be exposed. Others 
are older and more mature. Many of these have pre- 
pared themselves for college by their own exertions, and 
have entered under the influence of strong desires to 
avail themselves of its privileges. In these two classes 
may be found almost every variety of human character. 
Every virtue and every vice here exhibit themselves- 
There is infidelity, cold, calculating, malicious infidelity, 
establishing her wretched reign in the bosoms of young 
men just opening into manhood. There is vice, secret 
and open, of every species, and in every degree. There 
is intemperance and profanenes3, and hatred of religion, 
and an open and reckless opposition to the cause of God 
and holiness, scarcely ever surpassed by the animosity 
of any veteran foe. 



Ch. 10.] THE PARTING PROMISE. 315 

Dangers. The progress of sin. Efforts to reclaim a wanderer. 

The lines between the enemies and the friends of God 
are thus drawn in college more distinctly than in almost 
any other community: — and the young and inexperi- 
enced in every new class, are marked out by the idle, 
dissipated, and abandoned, for their prey. The victim 
first listens to language and sentiments which undermine 
his regard for the principles of duty, and weaken those 
cords which Christian parents had bound around his 
heart, when he left his early home, and he soon falls 
more and more under the influence of these ungodly 
companions. Half allured by their persuasions and 
half compelled by their rude intrusions into his room, he 
spends the hours which college laws allot to study, in 
idle reading, or in games of chance or skill. He first 
listens to ridicule of religious persons, and then joins in 
it, and next begins to ridicule and despise religion itself. 
The officers of college do all in their power to arrest 
his progress. They see the first indications of his be- 
ginning to go astray, in the neglect of his studies, and 
in the irregularity of his attendance upon college duties; 
and again and again appoint one of their number to 
warn him, and expostulate with him, and kindly to put 
him on his guard. How many such efforts have I made! 
As I write these paragraphs, I can recall these interviews 
to mind with almost the distinctness of actual vision. A 
short time after sending the messenger for the one who 
was to receive the friendly admonition, I would hear his 
timid rap at the door. He would enter with a look of 
mingled guilt, fear, and shame, or sometimes with a step 
and countenance of assumed assurance. How many 
times in such circumstances, have I tried in vain to gain 
access to the heart! I have endeavored to draw him 
into conversation about his father and mother, and the 
scenes of home and childhood, that I might insensibly 
awaken recollections of the past, and bring back long 
lost feelings, and reunite broken ties. I have tried to 



316 


THE CORNER-STONE. 


|Ch. 10 


Daily college life. 


Morning. 


The prayer bell. 



lead him to anticipate the future, and see the dangers of 
idleness, dissipation, and vice. I have endeavored to 
draw forth and encourage the feeble resolution, and by 
sympathy, and kindness, and promises of aid, to bring 
back the wanderer to duty and to happiness. He would 
listen in cold and respectful silence, and go away un- 
changed; perhaps, to make a few feeble resolutions, 
soon to be forgotten; but more probably to turn into 
ridicule the moral lecture, as he would call it, which he 
had received; and to go on, with a little more caution 
and secrecy perhaps, but with increased hardihood and 
rapidity, in the course of sin. 

In many cases, college censures and punishments 
frequently follow, until expulsion closes the story. In 
other cases, the individuals conceal their guilt, while 
they become more and more deeply involved in it, and 
more and more hardened. They associate with one 
another, and at length, in some cases, form a little com- 
munity where ungodliness, infidelity, and open sin, have 
confirmed an unquestioned sway. 

I must say a word or two now in regard to the ordi- 
nary routine of daily life at college, in order that the 
description which is to follow, may be better understood. 
Very early in the morning, the observer may see lights 
at a few of the windows of the buildings inhabited by 
the students. They mark' the rooms occupied by the 
more industrious or more resolute, who rise and devote 
an hour or two to their books by lamp-light on the winter 
mornings. About day, the bell awakens the multitude 
of sleepers in all the rooms, and in a short time they are 
to be seen issuing from the various doors, with sleepy 
looks, and with books under their arms, and some adjust- 
ing their hurried dress. The first who come down, go 
slowly, others with quicker and quicker step, as the toll- 
ing of the bell proceeds: — and the last few stragglers 
run with all speed, to secure their places before the bell 



Cll. 10.] THE PARTING PROMISE. 317 

Morning prayers. Recitations. The breakfast hour. 

ceases to toll. When the last stroke is sounded, it 
usually finds one or two too late, who stop short sudden- 
ly, and return slowly to their rooms. 

The President or one of the Professors reads a por- 
tion of Scripture by the mingled light of the pulpit 
lamps, and the beams which come in from the reddening 
eastern sky. He then offers the morning prayer. The 
hundreds of young men before him exhibit the appear- 
ance of respectful attention, except that four or five, 
appointed for the purpose, in different parts of the chap- 
el, are looking carefully around to observe and note upon 
their bills, the absentees. A few also, not fearing God 
or regarding their duty, conceal under their cloaks, or 
behind a pillar or a partition between the pews, the book 
which contains their morning lesson: — and attempt to 
make up, as well as the faint but increasing light will 
enable them, for the time wasted in idleness or dissipa- 
tion on the evening before. When prayers are over the 
several classes repair immediately to the rooms assigned 
respectively to them, and recite the first lesson of the 
day. 

During the short period which elapses between the 
recitation and the breakfast bell, college is a busy scene. 
Fires are kindling in every room. Groups are standing 
in every corner, or hovering around the newly-made 
fires: — parties are running up and down the stairs two 
steps at a time, with the ardor and activity of youth: — 
and now and then, a fresh crowd is seen issuing from the 
door of some one of the buildings, where a class has 
finished its recitation, and comes forth to disperse to 
their rooms; — followed by their instructer, who walks 
away to his house in the village. The breakfast bell 
brings out the whole throng again, and gathers them 
around the long tables in the Common's Hall, or else 
scatters them among the private families in the neighbor* 

hood. 

27* 



318 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 10. 

Study hours. The idle and negligent. The afternoon. Evening. 

An hour after breakfast the bell rings, to mark the 
commencement of study-hours: — when the students are 
required by college laws to repair to their respective 
rooms, which answer the three-fold purpose of parlor, 
bed-room, and study, to prepare for their recitation at 
eleven o'clock. They, however, who choose to evade this 
law, can do it without much danger of detection. The 
great majority comply, but some go into their neighbors' 
rooms to receive assistance in their studies, some lay 
aside the dull text-book, and read a tale, or play a game: 
and others, farther gone in the road of idleness and dis- 
sipation, steal secretly away from college, and ramble 
in the woods, or skate upon the ice, or find some ren- 
dezvous of dissipation in the village, evading their tasks 
like truant boys. They, of course, are marked as ab- 
sent; but pretended sickness will answer for an excuse, 
they think, once or twice, and they go on, blind to the 
certainty of the disgrace and ruin, which must soon 
come. 

The afternoon is spent like the forenoon, and the last 
recitation of the winter's day, is just before the sun goes 
down. An hour is allotted to it, and then follow evening 
prayers, at the close of which the students issue from 
the chapel, and walk in long procession to supper. 

It is in the evening, however, that the most striking 
peculiarities of college life, exhibit themselves. Some- 
times literary societies assemble, organized and man- 
aged by the students, where they hold debates, or 
entertain each other with declamations, essays, and 
dialogues. Sometimes a religious meeting is held, at- 
tended by a portion of the professors of religion, and 
conducted by an officer; at other times the students 
remain in their rooms, some quietly seated by their fire, 
one on each side, reading, writing, or preparing the 
lessons for the following morning: — others assemble for 
rairth and dissipation, or prowl around the entries and 



Ch. 10.] THE PARTING PROMISE. 319 

College mischief. Frequent consequences. Efforts of the officers. 

halls, to perpetrate petty mischief, breaking the windows 
of some hapless Freshman, — or burning nauseous drugs 
at the keyhole of his door, — or rolling logs down stairs, 
and running instantly into a neighboring room so as to 
escape detection; — or watching at an upper window to 
pour water unobserved upon some fellow student passing 
in or out below; — or plugging up the keyhole of the 
chapel door, to prevent access to it for morning prayers; 
— or gaining access to the bell by false keys, and cutting 
the rope, or filling it with water to freeze during the 
night: — or some other of the thousand modes of doing 
mischief to which the idle and flexible Sophomore is in- 
stigated by some calculating, and malicious mischief- 
maker in a higher class. After becoming tired of this, 
they gather together in the room of some dissolute com- 
panion, and there prepare themselves a supper, with 
food they have plundered from a neighboring poultry 
yard, and utensils obtained in some similar mode. Ar- 
dent spirit sometimes makes them noisy; — and a col- 
lege officer, at half past nine, breaks in upon them, and 
exposure and punishment are the consequences; — dis- 
grace, suspension, and expulsion for themselves, and 
bleeding hearts for parents and sisters at home. At 
other times, with controlled and restrained indulgence, 
they sit till midnight, sowing the bitter seeds of vice; 
undermining health, destroying all moral sensibility, and 
making almost sure the ruin of their souls. 

In the meantime, the officers of the institution, with a 
fidelity and an anxious interest, which is seldom equalled 
by any solicitude except that which is felt by parents for 
their children, struggle to resist the tide. They watch, 
they observe, they have constant records kept, and in 
fact, they go as far as it is possible to go, in obtain- 
ing information about the character and history of each 
individual, without adopting a system of espionage, 
which the nature of the institution, and the age of a 



$20 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 10. 

Their fruitlessness. Amherst College in April 1827. 

majority of the pupils, renders neither practicable nor 
proper. They warn every individual who seems to be in 
danger, with greater and greater distinctness, according 
to the progress he seems to be making, and as soon as 
evidence will justify it, they remove every one whose 
stay seems dangerous to the rest; but still the evil will 
increase, in spite of all the ordinary human means, 
which can be brought against it. 

Such is college, and such substantially was the con- 
dition of Amherst College, in April, 1827, at the time of 
my narrative. Faithful religious instruction was given 
on the Sabbath, at the chapel, where the students were 
required to attend, and we were accustomed to hold also, 
a meeting for familiar religious instruction one evening 
during the week. At this meeting, however, scarcely 
any were present; — a small portion of the actual mem- 
bers of the church were accustomed to attend, but never 
any one else. If a single individual, not professedly a 
Christian, had come in, for a single evening, it would 
have been noticed as a rare occurrence, and talked of 
by the officers as something unexpected and extraor- 
dinary. Our hearts ached, and our spirits sunk within 
us, to witness the coldness and hardness of heart towards 
God and duty, which reigned among so large a num- 
ber of our pupils. Every private effort which we could 
make with individuals, entirely failed, and we could see 
too, that those who professed to love the Savior, were 
rapidly losing their interest in his cause, and becoming 
engrossed in literary ambition and college rivalry, dis- 
honoring God's cause, and gradually removing every 
obstacle to the universal prevalence of vice and sin. 

There was then in college, a young man, who had 
been among the foremost in his opposition to religion. 
His talents and his address gave him a great deal of per- 
sonal influence, which was of such a character as to be 
a constant source of solicitude to the government. He 



Ch. 10] THE PARTING PROMISE. 321 

A student. Letter to the author. Writer's account of the condition of college. 

was repeatedly involved in difficulties with the officers 
on account of his transgressions of the College laws, 
and so well known were his feelings on the subject, that 
when at a government meeting, during the progress of 
the revival, we were told with astonishment, by the Pres- 
ident, that this young man was suffering great distress on 
account of his sins, it was supposed by one of the officers, 
that it must be all a pretence, feigned to deceive the 
President, and make sport for his companions. The 
President did not reply to the suggestion, but went to 
visit him; and when I next saw him, he said, " There's 
no pretence there. If the Spirit of God is not at work 
upon his heart, I know nothing about the agency of the 
Spirit." 

That young man is now the pastor of a church, active 
and useful, and when commencing this narrative, I wrote 
to him to send me such reminiscences of this scene as 
might remain upon his mind. He writes me thus. 

" Very dear Sir, 

" My obligations to you as a friend and instructer 
make me anxious to fulfil my promise of drawing up a 
sketch of the revival at Amherst College, during the last 
two or three weeks of April, 1827. I have been delayed 
partly by sickness, and the unusual pressure of duties 
here, partly by the difficulty of settling in my mind 
a clear idea of what you wish, and partly by the impos- 
sibility of reviving the memory of facts and impressions 
in the exact order of their occurrence. If this commu- 
nication should reach you too late to answer your pur- 
pose, it will at least prove my wish to yield you such 
assistance as I may. 

"For a considerable time previous, the subject of 
religion in college had fallen into great neglect; — even 
the outward forms were very faintly observed. During 
nearly two years in which I had been connected with 



322 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 10. 

Animosities and irregularities. The President's efforts. 

the college, I had never heard the subject mentioned 
among the students, except as matter of reproach and 
ridicule. At least this is true, so far as my intercourse 
with the students was concerned. Those who professed 
piety, either through timidity or unconcern, seemed to let 
the subject rest, and were chiefly devoted to indolence, 
or literary ambition. But while religion was shamed and 
fugitive, irreligion was bold and free. A majority of the 
students were avowedly destitute of piety; and of these 
a large portion were open or secret infidels; and many 
went to every length they could reach, of levity, pro- 
fan eness, and dissipation. So many animosities and 
irregularities prevailed, as to endanger the general repu- 
tation of the seminary. 

" Some of the students who were differently situated 
from myself, may perhaps have noticed preparatory 
movements on the common mass of mind, indicating an 
undercurrent of feeling, gradually gaining strength, and 
preparing the community for the results which were to 
follow. But I saw none ; — and none such could have 
been generally apparent. Upon myself, the change 
opened with as much suddenness as power." 

I here interrupt, for a moment, the narrative of my 
friend, to mention all the indications which I, myself, 
or my brother officers perceived. The President, with 
faithfulness, and plainness, urged upon the professors 
of religion, their duties and their neglect, and held up 
to them the evidences that they were, as a body, wan- 
dering from duty, and becoming unfaithful to their trust. 
But he had done this, often, before. In fact, he was in 
the habit of doing it. The difference seemed to be, that 
though heretofore they would listen with stupid coldness, 
and go away unchanged, — now they suddenly seemed 
inspired with a disposition to hear, and with a heart to 
feel. They began to come in greater numbers to the 



Cll. 10.] THE PARTING PROMISE. 323 

Their success. Attention arrested. Interest at the chapel. 

meetings appointed for them, and to listen with silent 
solemnity to warnings and expostulations which had been 
always unheeded before. All the efforts which were 
made were aimed at leading Christ's followers to peni- 
tence, and at bringing them back to duty. And though 
it had been impossible before, it was perfectly easy now; 
and while this very work was going on, — actually before 
the time had come for thinking of the others, — they be- 
gan spontaneously, or at least, to all appearance without 
human exertion, to tremble for themselves. The officers 
and the religious students were astonished day after day 
to find numbers whom no faithfulness of expostulation 
had hitherto been able to affect at all, now coming, of 
their own accord, and asking for help and direction; 
trembling with anxiety and remorse on account of their 
past sins, and with fear of God's displeasure. But to 
return to my correspondent. 

"The first circumstance which attracted my attention 
was a sermon from the President, on the Sabbath. I do 
not know what the text and subject were, for according 
to a wicked habit, I had been asleep till near its close. 
I seemed to be awakened by a silence, which pervaded 
t he room: a deep solemn attention which seems to spread 
over an assembly when all are completely engrossed in 
some absorbing theme. I looked around, astonished, 
and the feeling of profound attention seemed to settle on 
myself. I looked towards the President, and saw him 
calm and collected, but evidently most deeply interested 
in what he was saying, — his whole soul engaged, and 
his countenance beaming with an expression of eager 
earnestness, which lighted up all his features, and gave 
to his language unusual energy and power. 

" What could this mean? I had never seen a speaker 
and his audience so engaged. He was making a most 
earnest appeal to prevent those who were destitute of 



324 THE CORNER-STONE ^Ch. 10. 

Impression. Singular plan adopted by the students 

religion themselves, from doing any thing to obstruct the 
progress of the revival which he hoped was approach- 
ing — or of doing any thing to prevent the salvation of 
oihers, even if they did not desire salvation for them- 
selves. He besought them, by all the interests of im- 
mortality, and for the sake of themselves, and of their 
companions, to desist from hostilities against the work 
of God. 

" The discourse closed, and we dispersed. But many 
of us carried away the arrow in our hearts. The gayest 
and the hardiest trembled at the manifest approach of 
a sublime and unwonted influence. Among some who 
might have been expected to raise the front of opposition, 
I resolved not to do it, but to let it take its course: — 
keeping away from its influence, without doing any thing 
to oppose it; but neutrality was impossible." 

I must interrupt the narrative of the letter again, to 
explain a circumstance which I perceive is alluded to 
in the next paragraph. About a year before this time, 
there had been similar indications of a returning sense 
of duty to God, among the students. The officers were 
much encouraged, but our hopes were all dispelled by 
the success of a manoeuvre, which is so characteristic 
of college life and manners that I will describe it. The 
plan adopted by the enemies of religion was to come up 
boldly, and face the awakening interest, and, as it were, 
brave it down. The first indication of this design which 
I perceived was this. I had been invited by the serious 
portion of the students to address them one Saturday 
evening in a recitation room. I took my seat in the 
great armed-chair which had been placed for me in a cor- 
ner with a bible and hymn-book on the oval leaf attach- 
ed to it, whose form and fashion any collegian will re- 
collect, when the door opened, and in walked, one after 
another, six or eight of the most u oM ^rdened, noto- 



Ch. 10.] THE PARTING PROMISE 325 

The evening meeting. The intruders. An enemy turned to a friend. 

rious enemies of religion which the institution contained. 
They walked in, took their seats, in a row directly before 
me, and looked me in the face, — saying by their coun- 
tenances most distinctly, ' Sir, we defy you, and all your 
religion:' — and yet, it was with that peculiar address, 
with which a wild college student can execute his plans, 
so that there was not the slightest breach of any rule of 
external propriety, or any tangible evidence of intention- 
al disrespect. Not one of them had, perhaps, ever been 
voluntarily in a religious meeting at college before, and 
every one in the room knew it. I can see the leader 
now, as distinctly as if he was before me: — his tall form, 
manly countenance, and energetic look. He maintain- 
ed his ground as the enemy of God and religion, for a 
year after this time: — but then, that is at the time des- 
cribed in my letter, his eyes were opened: he prayed 
with agony of spirit, hour after hour, in his open room, 
for forgiveness; and now he is in a foreign land preach- 
ing to pagans the Savior, whom I vainly endeavored on 
this occasion to bring to him. I do not know whether 
this description will ever reach him; if it does, he will re- 
member the meeting in the Freshman recitation room, — 
and be as bold for God now, as he was then against him. 
He has been so already. 

After a few similar efforts to this, the irreligious party, 
for it is almost a trained and organized party, determined 
to carry their system farther still. They accordingly 
formed a plan for a religious meeting from which every 
friend of religion should be excluded. They circulated 
the information among themselves, taking special pains 
to secure the attendance of every one, and then, one 
evening, after prayers, as the officers were coming out 
of the chapel, one of them was astonished at being ac- 
costed by two well-known enemies of every thing like 
piety, who appeared, as they said, from some of their 
friends, as a committee to invite him to attend a religious 
28 



326 


THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 10. 


A strange assembly. 


Success of a bad design. 



meeting that evening. The officer promised to come; 
and when, after tea, he repaired to the room, he found it 
crowded with persons whose faces he had never seen at 
a voluntary meeting before. There they sat, the idle, 
the dissipated, the profane, and the hater and despiser 
of God; there were also numerous others, moral and 
well-disposed, but regardless of religious duty; but not 
a single one whom he had been accustomed to see in 
such a room, for such a purpose, was, on this occasion, 
allowed to be there. 

The officer addressed them faithfully and plainly, 
urging their duties and their sins upon their consid- 
eration, while they sat still, in respectful but heartless 
silence; looking intently upon him, with an expression 
of countenance which seemed to say, " Here we all are, 
move us if you can." And they conquered. They went 
home unmoved; and all the indications of increasing 
seriousness, soon disappeared. They continued to as- 
semble for several weeks, inviting the officers in succes- 
sion to be present, and at last, the few who remained, 
conducted the meetings themselves, with burlesqued 
sermons, and mock prayers, and closed the series at last, 
as I have been informed, by bringing in an ignorant 
black man, whose presence and assistance completed the 
victory they had gained over influences from above. All 
this took place the year before, and it is to these circum- 
stances that the next paragraph in the letter alludes. 

11 It was probably with an intention somewhat similar 
to that which prompted the meetings which the irreligious 
students held by themselves the year before, that the 
following plan was formed. A student who was tem- 
porarily my room-mate importuned me to invite one of 
the tutors to conduct a religious meeting at my room. I 
told him I would, if he would obtain the promise of cer- 
tain individuals, ten in number, whom I named, that 



Oh. 10.] THE PARTING PROMISE. 327 

The Hebrew Bible. The President's visit to the awakened student. 

they would attend. I selected such individuals as I was 
confident would not consent to be present. In a short 
time, he surprised me with the information, that he had 
teen them all, and that they had consented to the pro- 
posal. Of course, I was obliged, though reluctantly, 
to request the tutor to hold such a meeting. Most of us 
repaired to the place, at the appointed time, with feel- 
ings of levity, or of bitter hostility to religion. My room- 
mate had waggishly placed a Hebrew Bible on the stand. 
Whether this circumstance, or the character of his audi- 
tory, suggested the subject which the tutor chose, I know 
not: — but after opening the meeting with prayer, he en- 
tered into a defence of the divine authority of the Holy 
Scriptures, from external, and internal evidence, which he 
maintained in the most convincing manner; and then, on 
the strength of this authority, he urged its promises and 
denunciations upon us as sinners. The effect was very 
powerful. Several retired deeply impressed, and all were 
made more serious, and better prepared to be influenced 
by the truth. So that this affair ' fell out, rather to the 
furtherance of the Gospel.' 

" My own interest in the subject rapidly increased, and 
one day, while secluded in my apartment, and overwhelm- 
ed with conflicting emotions of pride and despair, T was 
surprised by a visit from the President. He informed 
me that he had come with the hope of dissuading me 
from doing any thing to hinder the progress of the revival. 
After intimating that he need feel no apprehensions on 
that point, I confessed to him with difficulty the agitation 
of my thoughts. Apparently much affected, he only 
said, 'Ah, I was afraid you would never have such feel- 
ings.' After remaining silent a few minutes, he en- 
gaged in prayer, and retired, advising me to attend a 
certain meeting of my class-mates for prayer. I felt 
very much like the Syrian general when offended by the 
supposed neglect of the prophet; for I thought he would 






328 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 10. 

The mother. Her son's letters. The christian mother's encouragement. 

have seized the opportunity to do some great thing for 
the relief of my laboring mind. 

" With feelings still more excited I repaired to one of 
my class-mates, who had the reputation of being one of the 
most consistent Christians among us. I asked him, with 
tears, to tell me what I should do to be saved. He too 
betrayed his wonder, and only resorted to prayer with 
me, in which he could do little, but say, c Jesus,' thou 
son of David, have mercy on ws.' Long afterwards, I 
learned that when he left me, to join a circle assembled 
that evening for prayer, he told them that my inquiry 
for the way of salvation, made him feel as if he needed 
to learn it himself." 

The writer of the narrative which I have been trans- 
cribing, had then a mother: she has since gone home. 
She was a widow, and he her only child. She was a 
Christian too, and her heart was oppressed, and her life 
saddened, by the character and conduct of her son. He 
wrote to her at this time, and among her papers after her 
death, he found his letters, and has sent them to me. I 
wish I could put them, just as they are, into this descrip- 
tion; — tattered and torn with frequent perusal. Those 
widowed and lonely mothers among my readers, whose 
lives are imbittered by the impiety and wild irregularity 
of an unconverted son, will understand the feelings which 
led her, literally to wear these letters out, with repeated 
readings. As they read them, let them look to God, and 
take courage, and remember that it is never too late to 
pray, and never too late for God to answer prayer. 

In the first letter, he informs his mother of the indications 
of a general awakening to an interest in religion among 
the students, and expresses a considerable personal in- 
terest in it. " For the sake of the institution, of religion, 
and for my own sake, I feel most anxious that the work 
may go on with power With what joy would I inform 



Ch. 10.] THE PARTING PROMISE. 3£9 

Suspense relieved. The young convert's narrative. 

you, that I felt the strivings of the Holy Spirit in my 
breast. But I can only say, that I feel a growing sense 
of humiliation for sin. May it ripen into conviction, 
sincere repentance, and unfeigned dedication of my 
heart, soul and powers to God." He then asked for his 
mother's prayers, and thanks her for all her past kind- 
ness to him. 

The anxious suspense which this letter must have 
occasioned to the parent who received it, was dispelled a 
few days afterwards by the following. Before perusing 
it, I wish the reader would look around, in the village 
or town, where he resides, fix his mind upon the leader 
in all the opposition to God and religion, which is made 
there; some man of accomplished manners and address, 
superior intellect, and extensive influence, — and the 
open and avowed opposer of piety, and all of its profes- 
sors. You must have such a man in mind as the writer, 
in order to appreciate it at all. Then recollect that this 
is from an only son to a widowed Christian mother, — 
transcribed exactly from the tattered fragments which I 
now carefully put together. 

»« Amherst College, April 28, 1897. 
" My dearest Mother, 

" Where shall I find words to declare the wonders of redeeming 
love ? Even in my low state, Almighty God has not forgotten me, 
nor the prayers of my pious friends. How can I describe the peace 
of mind, the swelling, overwhelming tide of joy which results from 
a-n entire submission to a merciful God ? I can only say, that there 
is no happiness like the happiness of a heart devoted to the holy 
pleasure of its Maker; no peace, like the peace of a mind that is 
reconciled to God. At the beginning of the present week, my 
attention was strongly directed to the importance of the soul. I 
immediately relinquished all other business, and devoted myself to 
this. My sense of the justice and excellence of the divine law, of 
the holiness of God, and my own dreadful and sinful condition 
rapidly increased. Tuesday and Wednesday my distress and anxie* 
ty grew more and more overpowering. Under the alarming im 
pression that I had committed the unpardonable sin, I devoted great 
28* 



330 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 10. 

Narrative centinued. 

and anxious inquiry to the nature of it. When I found reason to 
believe that this sin could not be brought up against me. there 
seemed to be a gleam of hope. I felt, or rather learned that I must 
be wholly resigned to the will of God, yet there was great opposition 
in my heart. For a long time it seemed as if I would readily sub- 
mit if I was only sure of pardon. I was making conditions and 
struggling against impressions, and became almost desperate, believ- 
ing that my guilt had shut up every avenue of hope. The conflict 
had prostrated my strength, and could not have been maintained 
much longer, when I was led to compare my situation with that of 
the lepers at the gate of Samaria, when that city was besieged by the 
Syrians : ' if they save us alive, we shall live; and if they kill us, 
we shall but die.' If I continued to hold out against God, I should 
surely be cut off, and that without remedy; if I surrendered myself 
unconditionally, and with an undivided heart, I still could but die, 
while there was every reason to hope that God would not reject a 
heart offered in sincerity and truth. Accordingly I struggled to 
obtain this frame of mind, and at length, as I hope, subdued my 
pride and hostility, so as to melt into perfect submission to the will 
of God, heartily to confess the holiness and justice of the law, and 
freely acknowledge my own unworthiness. After I had been ena- 
bled by the divine blessing to do this, it seemed so reasonable, so 
altogether necessary and even so easy, that I marvelled at the blind- 
ness, and hardness of heart, that had prevented my doing it long 
since. At the same time. I was filled with such transport, that it 
seemed to me as if I never could leave the foot of tbe cross ; as if I 
wished to retire from the world, to meditate and reflect on the love- 
liness of Christ. This happy change took place about Thursday 
noon. The period of my greatest mental distress was Wednesday 
night. Nature was so exhausted in a conflict of a few hours, that 
I could scarcely stand. I found it impossible to eat during a great 
part of this time. The flesh is still weak, but I rapidly recovered 
strength as I gained peace. I now for the first time realize what is 
meant by saying, that ' old things are passed away and all things 
become new.' I no longer see the same countenances, read the 
same Bible, and feel like the same person. The character of all my 
acquaintances are entirely changed. My pious friends once appear- 
ed gloomy and reserved, now they are benevolent and cheerful. My 
gay acquaintances seem no longer happy, but mad. The Book of 
God once seldom read, or when read, disrelished or misunderstood, 
now seems replete with interest and instruction. I am filled with 
joyful amazement as I learn from it, the love which Jesus has mani- 
fested for the world, and the purity and excellence of the divine 



Ch. 10.] THE PARTING PROMISE. 331 

Narrative concluded. 

character. At the same time it teaches numerous lessons of humili- 
ty, gives an odious aspect to sin, and warns against our deceiving 
hearts. I reflect with horror and dismay on my former course of 
forgetfulness of God, and feel as if it were a privilege to be allowed 
to attempt, though feebly, to pursue a totally opposite "course. The 
sense I have of my former character makes me feel deeply for all 
my impenitent friends. I feel constrained to humble myself before 
them on account of my former bad example and influence, and even 
with tears beseech them to turn from their sinful ways to repent- 
ance and faith. In short I feel a perfect good will, I hope, to all 
the world, and banish hatred and envy from my heart where they 
had long been cherished. But, my dear mother, my hope is with 
great fear and trembling ; sometimes it seems incredible that such 
an one as myself should find any favor with God ; and if I have any 
hope, it is that Jesus Christ might show forth in me all long-suffer- 
ing, for where sin abounded, grace doth much more abound. Some- 
times I feel as if I was in rebellion yet ; but I do not rest at such a 
time, till I resign myself anew, and without reserve to my Maker. 
But, dear mother, I would that much fervent prayer might be offer- 
ed up, that I may watch my heart diligently, and consider well the 
ground of my hope, and riot be dangerously deceived; and if I find 
myself under such an awful mistake, that I may not rest there, but 
give myself no peace, till by sincere repentance and faith I may be 
reconciled to God in Christ. On the other hand if it should seem 
that God has magnified his long suffering and the riches of his ten- 
der mercies in me, pray that I may be strengthened and established 
in repentance towards God, and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; and 
that I may exercise all the Christian virtues, and walk according to 
the law of God, increasing in the knowledge of the truth and growth 
in grace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. Oh, my dear mother, on you, 
on me, andxm all the world, may God pour out the influence of the 
Spirit, to guide and sanctify us, and fit us for an eternity of happi- 
ness in heaven. I would wish to write much more, but hope to see 
you next Saturday or before. My sincere love, and prayers to and 
for all friends. 

" Your affectionate Son." 

I have thus followed out this particular case, in order 
to give to my readers, by means of a minute examina- 
tion of one specimen, a clear idea of the nature of the 
changes which were effected. There were, however, 
many other cases, as marked and striking as this; sq 



532 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 10. 

Marks of genuine feeling. Religious meetings. 

that any person who was a member of college at that 
time, might be in doubt, after reading the preceding 
description, which of half a dozen decided enemies of 
religion, who were at this time changed, was the one 
referred to. In fact the feeling went through the col- 
lege; — it took the whole. Nothing like opposition to 
it was known, except that perhaps in a very few cases 
individuals made efforts to shield themselves from its in- 
fluence; and one or two did this successfully, by keeping 
themselves for many days, under the influence of ardent 
spirit! With a few exceptions of this kind, the unwont- 
ed and mysterious influence was welcomed by all. It 
was not, among Christians, a feeling of terror, of sadness 
and melancholy, but of delight. Their countenances 
were not gloomy and morose, as many persons suppose 
is the case at such a time, but they beamed with an ex- 
pression of enjoyment, which seemed to be produced by 
the all pervading sense of the immediate presence of 
God. I have seen, in other cases, efforts to appear 
solemn, — the affected gravity of countenance, and seri- 
ousness of tone; — but there was nothing of that here. 
Hearts were all full to overflowing, and it was with a 
mysterious mingling of peace and joy, — an emotion 
of deep overwhelming gladness in the soul, though of 
a character so peculiar, that it expressed itself in the 
countenance by mingled smiles and tears. 

The ordinary exercises of college were not interrupt- 
ed. The President held two or three religious meetings 
during the week, but recitations went on unchanged, 
and I well recollect the appearance of my mathematical 
classes. The students would walk silently and slowly 
from their rooms, and assemble at the appointed place. 
It was plain that the hearts of many of them were full 
of such emotions as I have described. Others, whose 
peace was not made with God, would sit with down- 
cast eyes, and when it came their turn to be questioned, 



Ch. 10.] THE PARTING PROMISE. 333 

The recitation room. The circle for prayer. 

would make an effort to control their feelings, and 
finding that they could not recite, would ask me to 
excuse them. Others, known heretofore as hardened 
enemies of God and religion, sat still, their heads reclin- 
ed upon the seats before them, with hearts overwhelmed 
with remorse and sorrow, and eyes filled with tears. I 
could not ask them a question. One morning, I recol- 
lect, so strong and so universal were these feelings, that 
we could not go on.« The room was silent as death. 
Every eye was down; I called upon one after another, 
but in vain; and we together prayed God to come and 
be with us, and bless us, and to save us and our class- 
mates from sin and suffering, and then silently went to 
our rooms. 

The buildings were as still this week as if they had 
been depopulated. The students loved to be alone. 
They walked about silently. They said little when they 
met, as men always do when their hearts are full. Late 
in the evening they would collect in little circles in one 
another's rooms, to spend a few moments in prayer. I 
was often invited to these meetings, and it was delightful 
to see the little assembly coming into the room at the 
appointed time, each bringing his own chair, and gather- 
ing around the bright burning fire, with the armed-chair 
placed in one corner for their instructer, and the two 
occupants of the room together upon the other side. 
They who were present at these meetings will not soon 
forget the enjoyment with which their hearts were filled, 
as they here bowed in supplication before God. 

On Tuesday and Thursday evenings we assembled in 
the largest lecture room, for more public worship. It 
was the same room where, a few weeks before, on the 
same occasions, we could see only here and there one, 
among the vacant, gloomy seats. Now how changed. 
At the summons of the evening bell, group after group, 
ascended the stairs and crowded the benches. It was 






334 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 10. 

The Tuesday evening meeting. Solemnity. 

the rhetorical lecture room, and was arranged with rows 
of seats on the three sides, and a table for the Professor 
on a small platform on the fourth. The seats were soon 
full, and settees were brought in to nil the area left in 
the centre. The President was seated at the table; on 
either side of him the Professors; and beyond them, 
and all around, the room was crowded with young men 
hungering and thirsting after the word of God. 

I recollect particularly one of these meetings. It was 
one of the earliest after the revival commenced, and 
before us, crowding the settees in the open area, were 
gathered all the wild, irreligious, vicious and abandoned 
young men which the institution contained. There they 
were, the whole of them; all enmity gone, opposition 
silenced, and pride subdued, and they sat in silence, 
gazing at the President and drinking in all his words, 
as he pressed upon them their sins, and urged them to 
throw down the weapons of their rebellion, and come 
and submit themselves to God. The text for the eve- 
ning, if I recollect right, was this, " Notwithstanding, 
be ye sure of this, the kingdom of God, has come nigh 
unto you." Every person in the room felt that it was 
nigh. He spoke in a calm, quiet, but impressive man- 
ner, and every word went to a hundred and fifty hearts. 
Many persons imagine that preaching in such a season 
is loud and noisy, and set off with exciting remarks, and 
extravagant gesticulations; and it is so sometimes, when 
men attempt to make a revival by their own power. But 
where the spirit of God really comes, there are very dif- 
ferent indications. Every one feels irresistibly that God 
is there, and that he himself must walk humbly and soft- 
ly before him. The almost supernatural power which 
preaching seems to have at such a time is the power of 
simple truth, on hearts bowed down before it by influ- 
ences from above. Such a season robs eloquence and 
genius of all their power; declamation is more than use- 



Ch. 10.] THE PARTING PROMISE. 335 

Sincere and honest feeling. The sermon. The hymn. 

less, and all the arts of oratory of no avail. There are 
souls awed and subdued before God, and longing for 
the light of truth; and he who ean supply these desires 
v. ith the greatest calmness, and directness, and simplici- 
ty, will be the means of producing the most powerful ef- 
fects. A man could scarcely give utterance to rant and 
declamation and noisy harangue in such a room, even if 
he had come all prepared to do it. As he should enter 
such a scene, he would be subdued and calmed by its 
irrestible influence. He would instinctively feel, that 
noisy eloquence there would grate upon every ear and 
shock every heart, and no bold assurance would be suf- 
ficient to carry him on. 

We listened to the sermon, which was earnest and 
impressive, though direct, plain, and simple; it told the 
ungodly hearers before us, that the kingdom of heaven 
was nigh them, and urged them to enter it. We knew, 
— we could almost feel that they were entering it; and 
whe«, at the close of the meeting, we sang our parting 
hymn, I believe there was as much real, deep flowing 
happiness in that small but crowded apartment, as four 
such walls ever contained. 

When the indications of this visit from above first ap- 
peared, it was about a fortnight before the close of the 
term, and in about ten days its object was accomplished. 
Out of the whole number of those who had been irreli- 
gious at its commencement, about one half professed to 
have given themselves up to God; but as to all the talent, 
and power of opposition, and open enmity, — the vice, the 
profaneness, the dissipation, — the revival took the whole. 
With one or two exceptions, it took the whole. And 
when, a few weeks afterwards, the time arrived for those 
thus changed to make a public profession of religion, it 
was a striking spectacle to see them standing in a crowd 
in the broad aisle of the college chapel, purified, sanc- 
tified, and in the presence of all their fellow students 



336 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 10. 

Religious character of the converts. These changes the work of God. 

renouncing sin, and solemnly consecrating themselves to 
God. Seven years have since elapsed, and they are in 
his service now. I have their names before me, and I 
do not know of one who does not continue faithful to his 
Master still. 

But I have dwelt too long perhaps on this subject, and 
I must close this chapter. I have been intending how- 
ever to say two things in conclusion, though I must now 
say them briefly. 

1. There are many persons who, because they have 
seen or heard of many spurious and heartless efforts to 
make a revival of religion, accompanied by noise and 
rant, and unprofitable excitement, doubt the genuineness 
of all these reformations. But I ask them whether the 
permanent alteration, in a week, of nearly all the wild and 
ungovernable and vicious students of a college, is. not 
evidence of the operation of some extraordinary moral 
cause. We who witnessed it cannot doubt. Such cases 
too, are not uncommon. They occur continually, all 
over our land, producing entire changes in neighbor- 
hoods and villages and towns, and very often in colleges. 
The effect in this case upon the police of the institution 
was astonishing. Before the revival, the officers of the 
institution were harassed and perplexed with continual 
anxiety and care, from the turbulence and vice of their 
pupils. But from this time we had scarcely any thing 
to do with the discipline of the institution. Month after 
month, every thing went smoothly and pleasantly, and 
we had nothing to do but to provide instruction for in- 
dustrious, faithful and regular young men; while before, 
the work of punishing misdemeanors, and repressing dis- 
order, and repairing injuries, demanded far the great- 
est portion of our attention and care. Similar changes 
have often been produced in other communities, and the 
fact that so many persons have thus had the opportunity 



Ch. 10.] THE PARTING PROMISE. 33Tf 

Witnessed by thousands. Counterfeits. Influences of the Spirit. 

personally to witness them, is the real ground of the 
conviction which almost universally prevails, among the 
most intelligent and substantial portions of the community, 
that they are the work of God. That there will be some 
counterfeits is to be expected. As human nature is, it 
is certain. But we ought, when convinced that there 
are counterfeits, not to condemn all, but carefully to 
discriminate, and to bring before the world the marks of 
a counterfeit as distinctly as possible, so that nothing but 
what is genuine may obtain credit among mankind. 

2. Reader, there is such a thing as having the heart 
filled with peace and joy, under the influence of the 
Spirit of God. Do not doubt it, if you have not your- 
self experienced it, and do not forget it if you have. 
The mysterious influence shows itself in many ways. It 
whispers to the soul sometimes in solitude, at midnight, 
and beckons it away from the world to God and duty. 
The morning light, and the return of business and pleas- 
ures silence it, perhaps, — but then it will return in sick- 
ness, in affliction, and sorrow, and say to the spirit, still 
lingering about the world, " Come away, come away." 
It may be disregarded still, — but it will hover near, and 
like a dove unwilling to leave its master, will flutter 
round and light upon him again and again. It melts the 
soul into penitence for sins which have been thought of 
with cold insensibility for years, — it subdues stubborn- 
ness and pride, — it removes the vail from before the 
tomb, and brings God and the judgment and heaven to 
view. It gives life and sensibility to the torpid soul, — 
arouses its powers, nerves the weak, humbles the proud, 
breaks the chains and fetters of sin, and under its magic 
power, the hardened, rebellious, stupid enemy of God, 
rises to life ' and to freedom. His restless, feverish, 
anxiety is gone, and joy gladdens his heart, hope beams 
in his eye, and he comes to his Savior, subdued, altered, 
purified, for ever Blessed Spirit, thou art indeed the 
29 



338 



THE CORNER-STONE. 



[Ch. 11 



The Comforter. 



Various classes of readers. 



Address to the few. 



light and life of man; — the only real Comforter, in this 
vale of sorrow and sin. We will pray for thee, and open 
our hearts to thee, and welcome thy coming. Descend, 
heavenly influence, descend every where, and bring this 
sinning and suffering world back to its duty. 



CHAPTER XI. 



THE CONCLUSION. 
" If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them." 

The question which ought to arise, in the mind of 
every reader, as he draws towards the close of a reli- 
gious book, is this; " What practical effect is this work 
to produce upon my mind?" The question is generally 
very easily answered. Some read from mere curiosity; 
— some to beguile weary hours; — some to be able to 
say that they have read what their friends and acquaint- 
ances have been reading. One man goes over the 
chapters of such a work as this, thinking all the time 
how its truths will apply to his neighbors; another scru- 
tinizes paragraph after paragraph to discover if possible 
whether the writer believes in this theory or that, or to 
determine the religious party with which he is to be 
classed; and a third, though he may attend to the prac- 
tical bearings and relations of the subject, is thinking, 
all the time, of other persons, in applying them. This 
chapter he appropriates to his wife, — another to his 
child, and another he thinks admirably adapted to the 
spiritual condition of his neighbor. The number of 
readers who take up a religious book honestly and sin- 
cerely to promote their own personal piety is very small. 

Still there are a few; and it is to these few that the 



Ch. 11.] THE CONCLUSION. 339 

Very few really accessible. "I wish I were a Christian." 

remaining pages of this work ought now to be devoted. 
There are a few, who do read with reference to the 
supply of their own spiritual wants. It would be too 
much to say that all of them have a sincere and honest 
desire to know and to do their duty, but they have at 
least some personal interest in it. If they are not really 
prepared to take the right course, at least the question 
whether they will take it or not comes up to view. It 
comes up in the light of a personal question which they 
at least consider. Others read without admitting the 
claims of personal duty, even to a hearing. The intel- 
lect, the imagination, the taste, are perhaps in an acces- 
sible position; but the conscience and all the moral 
powers are far within, — protected from all attack, — every 
avenue sealed, — and every channel of communication cut 
off, so that the. moral slumber cannot be disturbed. It 
is those only who are accessible, that we have to address 
in the few pages that now remain. 

There is a great deal of perplexity often felt, by a 
class of thoughtful, serious-minded persons, in regard to 
the difficulties which stand in the way of their own per- 
sonal salvation. They wish to become Christians, they 
say, but there seems to be some mysterious yet irresist- 
ible agency which keeps them back in the coldness and 
wretchedness of sin. In such cases there is perhaps a 
wish, a sincere wish, of a certain kind, to become a Chris- 
tian; but it remains inert and powerless in their hearts; it 
does not lead them to piety itself, and they feel and act 
as iFthere was some mysterious obstacle to their obtain- 
ing what they sincerely and honestly desire. 

The two great elementary principles of religion are 
these; the duty of strong, benevolent interest in every 
fellow being, and of submission and gratitude towards the 
Supreme. Jesus Christ has said that these constitute the 
foundation on which all revealed religion rests; and it is 



340 THE CORXER-STONE. [Ch. 11. 

Two great principles of duty; universal and unquestionable. 

difficult to find words to express the perfect adaptation 
of these principles to the purposes of a great moral gov- 
ernment, — their admirable tendency to secure universal 
order and happiness. There is not a statesman or phi- 
losopher on the globe who can improve upon them, nor 
a savage low enough not to perceive their moral beauty 
and grandeur. They are the golden chain to bind all 
God's creatures to one another, and to him; complete, 
— for there is no other principle of duty which can even 
claim to be ranked with them ; unrivalled, — for no other 
system can be proposed which would even promise to 
secure the results of this; and undeniable in their ex- 
cellence and efficacy, — for never, since the world was 
formed, was a mind so perverse as to call them in 
question. They cannot be called in question. No per- 
son can doubt that a moral governor, presiding over 
moral and intelligent creatures, by prescribing such 
rules as the fundamental laws of his empire, takes the 
most direct and efficient course to secure universal har- 
mony and happiness. No man can utter a word against 
them. There is a feeling within him, which would rise 
up and silence him, if he should attempt to do it. They 
etand inscribed by conscience in every heart; reason 
and justice and truth have set their seals to the record; 
and they must stand, in characters which cannot be 
obliterated. 

But though mankind cannot question the excellence 
of the system of duty which God has established for his 
creatures, they can, in their practice, violate it: and a 
great many pleasures of various kinds will come by 
means of such violation. If a man will give up his 
neighbors' rights and happiness, he may secure some 
new indulgences for himself, in consequence of it. If 
he will disobey God, he may find some gratifications in 
doing what he has forbidden. The question between 
holiness and sin, is not a question between unalloved 



Ch. II.] THE CONCLUSION. 341 

Some pleasure in sin. Sin preferred. Supposed desire for piety. 

happiness, and unmixed, uninterrupted misery. It is 
rather a question between two sorts of pleasures. There 
is guilty indulgence on one side, and holy peace of mind 
on the other. There is selfish interest or aggrandize- 
ment beckoning to this path, and the happiness of doing 
good, inviting to the other. In the former the heart 
may secure the feverish but real delight which gratified 
propensities and passions may afford; envy and anger 
may have their way, — revenge may be allowed its in- 
toxicating triumph, — and sinful pleasure may bring her 
sparkling cup; in the latter, are the peaceful enjoyments 
of piety, — the sense of protection, — -the hope of unde- 
served forgiveness, — communion with God, and heart- 
felt interest in the welfare of men. Between these two 
classes of pleasures, the human soul must make its choice, 
and the real difficulty in the way of the salvation of men, 
is, that they do really prefer the pleasures of sin to those of 
holiness; and of course, if they enjoy the one, they must 
forego the other. 

Men very ofl^n suppose that they have a love, a desire 
for piety, but it is something else, not piety itself, which 
in such cases, they love. When they look directly at the 
two classes of pleasures above described, they will see, 
if they are honest, that they do deliberately prefer the 
former. The pleasures of sin, in some form or other, 
look alluring, but the pleasures of holiness do not look 
alluring. The dominion of sin therefore is pleasant; the 
soul loves its chains, and consequently it does not really 
desire a rescue. The feelings therefore which it some- 
times cherishes, are of a different character altogether 
from a real wish to escape the pollution and the miseries 
of sin; for the heart has scarcely any sense of its pollu- 
tion or of its miseries. 

There seem to be two prominent ways, by which an 
individual may deceive himself in supposing that he 
wishes to become a Christian These we ought her§ 
<29* 



342 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 11. 

Influence of a religious book. First ground of error. 

particularly to describe; for the reading of a religious 
book, if it presses plainly the principles of duty, usually 
awakens these false desires in many minds. I cannot 
but hope that many of those who will have perused these 
pages, will be really led to see sin and holiness in their 
true light, and by the blessing of God, be led to choose 
henceforth the path of duty. But there can be no ques- 
tion that far the greater part of those whose hearts are 
accessible, and who will be influenced at all, will only 
be led to form those desires which are always ready to 
spring up in the unrenewed heart, but which have only 
the form and appearance of a love for piety. 

I ought not perhaps to say, that religious reading/bnns 
those desires in the heart, for they exist already almost 
every where, and those who cherish them are most likely 
to be found among the readers of a work professedly 
exhibiting the practical bearings of religious truth. 
They read such a work as this, under the influence of 
these counterfeit desires, and in many cases, the only 
effect is to bring out those desires to a little greater dis- 
tinctness and vividness, without at all altering their char- 
acter. Reader, are you a serious minded, thoughtful 
friend of religion. — looking for instruction, and thinking 
that you really desire a renewed heart, and the happiness 
of piety? Consider carefully what is now to be said, and 
see whether you have not been mistaken as to the nature 
of your feelings. 

1. The first kind of feeling which is mistaken for a 
love of piety, is the momentary relief which the mind 
sometimes finds in religious contemplation, from the fear 
of the punishment of sin. You are a young man, and 
from early infancy you have known your duty to God. 
The kind and faithful voice of a father or mother has, 
during all the long years of childhood and youth, been 
gently endeavoring to win you to their Master's service, 
but in vain. You have chosen sin, and lived in it At 






Ch. 11.] THE CONCLUSION 


343 


The thoughtful young man. Conscience; recollections; 


fears. 



length, however, as you have left your father's roof and 
have come out into the world, and as the years, and the 
duties, and the scenes of childhood are all actually past, 
and you are separated from them for ever, you begin to 
realize that life is actually passing away. Besides, the 
sins of childhood rise to your remembrance. Conscience 
is perhaps seared in respect to most of them, but there 
are a few which, when they rise to mind, awaken a 
peculiar bitterness of remorse, which makes you shut 
your eyes against the recollection, and turn away from 
it as soon as you can. It is one of the mysterious 
principles of human nature that some of its moral wounds 
will not heal. The longer the man lives, the more bitter 
will grow some of the recollections of early guilt; and 
in the permanence of these fountains of suffering, which 
he finds he cannot close, he reads a lesson which his 
foreboding fears press very strongly upon his mind. He 
sometimes trembles to think that all his other wounds 
may only be closed superficially, and may perhaps be 
gathering in his soul secret stores of remorse and suffer 
ing, to break out whenever God shall speak the word. 
That this is the case in fact, with all merely forgotten sin, 
no careful observer of the human heart, or reader of the 
Bible can doubt. The class of persons I am describing 
are, however, not very careful observers; "they do not 
really believe that they are laying up such treasures of 
wrath, — they only suspect it; they now and then get a 
little glimpse of the power of past guilt, just enough to 
alarm them. 

Besides these gentle stings, which treasured recollec- 
tions of guilt sometimes give them, as if just to remind 
them what vipers they have in their bosoms, there is the 
voice of conscience murmuring against present habits 
of transgression, and foreboding fears warning of future 
danger; and the word of God, too, confirming and sanc- 
tioning both. You have perhaps often felt these anxie- 



344 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 11. 

Soothing influence of a good intention. Loving the rewards of piety. 

ties and sufferings. In the hour of solitude, when pecu- 
liar circumstances favor reflection, your heart is thus 
agitated and distressed under a sense of its past and 
present guilt. You look at religion, at reconciliation 
with God, solely as a way of escape from threatening 
danger. You form a vague determination to seek this 
safety at some future time, and this intention, as it af- 
fords a little gleam of hope, brings a little sensation of 
relief, and that little feeling of relief, arising from the 
contemplation of the safety of piety, is mistaken for a love 
for spiritual joys themselves. 

The mere thought of religion, as a possible future 
possession, brings thus very often a feeling of relief to 
the conscience, although the heart may not in the slight- 
est degree lose its love for sin, or relax its hold upon it. 
Conscience is bribed to be quiet by a good intention, a 
promise, — to be fulfilled at some future day. Though 
the soul loves irreligion as much as ever, and shrinks 
back, as much as ever, from humble, broken-hearted 
penitence, and communion with God, and faith, and 
spiritual joy, it still fancies that it has a desire for piety. 
" I wish I were a Christian," it says; — it means, " I wish 
I could escape the consequences of sin, without having 
to give up its joys." 

Reader, is this your state of mind? Do you wish for 
piety only as a means of escaping present remorse and 
anxiety, and future danger, while you still wish to cling to 
sin? The way to determine whether you do or not, is to 
withdraw your thoughts from the consequences of sin and 
holiness, and fix them on sin and holiness themselves. 
Does the idea of coming and giving yourself up wholly, 
soul and body, to God, look pleasant to you? A child 
who loves his father, will take pleasure in bringing his 
work, whatever it may be, where his father is, that he 
may do it by his side. Now does the idea of bringing your 
work, every day, to your father, so that you may always 



Ch. 11.] THE CONCLUSION. 345 

Loving piety itself. Influence of fear. Undefined fears. 

be in his presence, working by his side, look pleasant to 
you? Is there anything alluring in the idea of exam- 
ining thoroughly all your sins, and bringing them out 
before God in complete exposure? Can you see any 
pleasure in penitence, in submission, in a feeling of 
utter and helpless dependence on God? Do you like the 
idea of giving up your favorite selfish schemes, and 
coming to identify yourself with his cause, — so as to 
make yourself one with hirn, in object and pursuit? As 
you look abroad over the world, and see the condition of 
the human race, do you feel like embarking your all in 
the work of attempting to restore it? I do not mean to 
ask whether you can drag yourself up to these duties, — 
whether you can find motives enough to drive or frighten 
you to the mechanical performance of them. — But do 
they look pleasant to you ? Does the enterprise seem 
alluring and agreeable! These are the questions which 
you ought to ask yourself, if you wish to determine 
whether you have any real desire for piety. It is not 
enough that you should have anxiety and foreboding 
fears from which you find a partial and momentary relief, 
in the vague intention of one day beginning to serve your 
Maker. The safety, the peace, the promised rewards 
of piety, of course look alluring to all men. The great 
question is, how do you feel about piety itself. 

In regard, thus, to a very large proportion of those who 
think they wish to become Christians, their interest in 
the subject amounts substantially to this; — they are so 
desirous to escape from the threatening dangers of sin, 
that they are almost willing, even to take religion as a 
means of escape. How much love for piety there is in 
this the reader may judge. 

A person cannot safely conclude that this is not his 
state of mind, because, when he thinks of the subject, he 
has no distinct and well defined fears of a future retri- 
bution. It is very often the case that the feelings, from 



346 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 11. 

Fear of consequences proper. Desire of happiness. 

which the thought of religion as a possible future pos- 
session, affords a little relief, are mingled emotions of 
remorse and gloomy foreboding, which present to the 
mind no distinct objects of dread, but which still dis- 
turb the peace. Now it is plainly of no consequence 
what form uneasiness assumes; an inclination to become 
a Christian, based in any way on a desire to avoid un- 
easiness, is a very different thing from loving it on its 
own account. Do the duties of God's service look 
alluring to you? If they do not, you plainly have no 
real love for piety; if they do, you are of course a Chris- 
tian, for to love these duties and to perform them, are 
inseparable. 

Let no one however suppose from these remarks, that 
a fear of future punishment, or a desire to escape the 
uneasiness and the remorse attendant on continuance in 
sin, are wrong. They are not wrong. The Bible every 
where endeavors to awaken them; and their influence 
ought to be felt by every human being, far more power- 
fully than they are. The point urged in the preceding 
paragraphs is that these desires alone, ivhile the heart 
revolts from piety itself, are no desires for religion. Let 
not therefore the young disciple who is just beginning to 
love and serve his Maker, be led to despond, because he 
finds himself so much under the influence of a desire to 
get free from the burdens and dangers of sin. You do 
right to wish to escape suffering; you do right to act 
under the influence of that wish. Your steps should be 
quickened — your ardor and alacrity should receive an 
impulse from a sense of the greatness of the dangers, from 
which you are endeavoring to fly. The question is not 
whether you are driven; but whether you are allured as 
luell as driven. You are weary of present remorse, and 
you shrink from future suffering. It is well. Do you also 
love holiness and reach forward to it as, in itself, a spiritual 
treasure. He who has real desires for piety, partakes of 



Ch. 11.] THE CONCLUSION. 347 

Second form of false interest in religion. The evening walk. 

the fears and anxieties which agitate him who has not; 
but he has love and hope, besides. The one is like the 
disobedient child, who has rebelled against his father, 
broken away from his authority, and gone from his 
presence; and at night, he is bewildered in a forest, and 
terrified by darkness and storm, — but yet he will not go 
home. The former is another son, who having wandered 
in the same way, is equally distressed at the dangers 
which threaten him, and trembles perhaps even more 
than the other, at the thunder and the wind; — but his 
face is towards the dwelling he lias left, — his heart is melt- 
ed, and he longs to be again at his father's side, to ask 
his forgiveness, and once more to be happy under his 
protection. — Reader, do you really wish to return? 

2. I have said that there are two forms of interest in 
religion, which are often mistaken for sincere desires for 
piety. The first, the one which we have described, may 
be called the interest of anxiety, the second that of 
poetic taste. There is a strong poetic interest which may 
be excited by many subjects connected with religion, 
and on this, a heart may dwell with delight, while it has 
no returning sense of duty, no relenting for sin, and 
nothing but dislike for the actual service of God. 

It is the refined and sensitive mind which is most ex- 
posed to this danger, — and this too generally in the 
earlier periods of life, when the imagination is active 
and vigorous, and the bosom easily swells with the emo- 
tions she excites. A young man of such a character, 
rambles at sunset on a summer evening, on the sea-shore. 
All is stillness and beauty. The surface of the water is 
smooth and glassy, and reflects, even to the distant ho- 
rizon, a silvery light. On this liquid mirror, here and 
there a verdant island seems to float, doubled by reflec- 
tion, and around some distant point of land, a boat 
ploughs its way, the sound of the dip and impulse of its 



S48 THE CORNER-STONE. ^Ch. 11. 

The ocean. Night. Clouds. Stars. 

oars coming distinctly to the observer's ear, across the 
smooth expanse which spreads itself out before him. 

He gazes on this scene an hour, — now watching the 
wheeling of the sea bird in his flight, — now tracing the 
line of the distant shore, following it, on one side to the 
lofty and rugged precipice where it abruptly terminates, 
and on the other, running out on the attenuated sandy 
point, which glides down into the water so gradually that 
he cannot fix the boundary between sea and land; — and 
now watching, both with eye and ear, the ceaseless reg- 
ularity with which the genie swell of the water foams 
against the rocks at his feet. 

Presently he perceives a zone of faint and almost 
imperceptible shadow, rising is the east, — the dark har- 
binger of night; for darkness sends forward the sombre 
signal of its coming, into the same quarter of the heavens 
which beams, in the morning, with the bright precursor 
of the day. He looks towards the western sky, and 
Venus shines with a faint beam, the earliest star among 
the thousands which are soon to kindle up the sky. 
Clouds, magnificent in form and splendid in coloring, 
float in the sun's last rays. Their brilliancy however 
gradually dies away. The bright, gilded edge becomes 
obscured, — the crimson and the purple fade into gray, 
and the broad and splendid expanse of air, so bright with 
mere reflection, that it seemed like a flaming curtain 
floating in the sky, loses its hues, and stars shine out one 
by one, all over the darkening expanse. The gorgeous 
mass of cloud too in the horizon, exchanges one glory 
for another; — for while its brilliant colors fade, and its 
bosom grows dark, the beaming flash of lightning now 
and then faintly spreads over it, revealed by the very 
darkness which robbed the cloud of superficial splendor. 

The observer of all this, sits upon the rocky shore, in 
a reverie of enjoyment. As a mere scene of physical 
beauty, it is capable of making a strong impression; 



Ch. 11.] THE CONCLUSION. 349 

Poetic feeling. The romance of religion. Holiness. 

but the poetic interest which it excites, is greatly increas- 
ed when he conceives of the Supreme Divinity as presid- 
ing over this scene, and sees his skill and taste in every 
beauty, and his direct act in every change. He, who, 
in contemplating the glories of creation, gives Jehovah 
his proper place in the conceptions which he forms, rises 
far above the mere poet or philosopher. Bringing in life 
and intelligence in any form, always exalts and ennobles 
a scene of natural beauty, — and when the life and intelli- 
gence thus brought in, is the great God and Father of all, 
the measure of moral beauty and grandeur is full. 

Besides, while an observer, with a heart capable of 
enjoying such a scene, thinks of the Deity as presiding 
in it, he can find much poetic interest in many aspects 
even of his own relations to that Deity. He reflects that 
the Almighty power, which could arrange such a scene 
as that around him, and give to the whole its indescriba- 
ble power to touch the human heart, can never be at a 
loss for the means to make his creatures happy. He 
gazes into the lofty sky, and the extent and spendor of 
the view give him some faint conception of the immen- 
sity of the community over which God presides. He 
thinks of this little world, as a revolted province; and as 
he fancies that allegiance and harmony and happiness 
reign in all the bright regions before him, his heart 
swells with a sort of chivalrous desire to join the minority 
here, in their efforts to restore Jehovah's reign. The 
spirit which rises in his )reast is that of romance, — of 
chivalry. If God's king lorn was apolitical or a military 
one he would press forward at once to its banner. But 
alas, — it is a kingdom of holiness. To enter it he must 
come down from his high imaginations, and go to work 
in penitence and humility among the corruptions of his 
own heart, — and this he cannot do. He can admire 
and love magnificence, whether natural or moral, but he 
has no heart for inward jJurity. 
30 



350 THE CORNER-STONE. [Cfa. 11 

These feelings not wrong; only insufficient of themselves. 

In the case which I have supposed, the poetic feeling 
which has invested some of the aspects of religion with 
a charm, is very strongly marked. It seldom exists so 
distinctly, and occupies the soul so exclusively, as in the 
case I have described. This play of the imagination is 
more frequently mingled with other feelings, and some 
careful discrimination is necessary to ascertain how far 
the heart is under its influence. Here however I ought 
to give a similar caution to the one annexed to the pre- 
ceding head; that is, a caution to guard the reader 
against supposing that the feelings which I have thus 
described are wrong. They are not wrong, when united 
with penitence and faith. Alone, they are insufficient 
They may properly mingle with piety, though they can 
never constitute it. 

No renewed mind whatever, unless it is enveloped in 
hopeless stupidity, can look upon the ever varied scene 
of beauty and grandeur which is presented to us here, 
without some such swelling emotions of joy that God, the 
Maker of all, is his father and friend. Let no one con- 
clude, therefore, because he can perceive such feelings 
in his heart, that therefore all his interest in piety is of 
the wrong kind. The question is not, whether you have 
these feelings, but whether you have any besides these. 
You love the magnificence of nature, — the beauties of 
the morning, — the splendor of the sky, — the roaring of 
the ocean, — and the terrific sublimity of the midnight 
storm. You enjoy the contemplation of God, when you 
consider him as the presiding power which rules over 
all these scenes. All this is well. But do you also love, 
and long for inward purity. Do the feelings of penitence 
and faith, and humble, childlike submission, appear to 
you as spiritual treasures, which you earnestly desire to 
bring home more and more fully to your soul; — or do 
you loathe them, and wish to be free to live and act and 
feel as you have doner If the latter is the case, you 






Ch. 11.] THE CONCLUSION" 351 



Wishing to be a Christian. Difficulties removed. 

must not mistake any serious thoughts or deep emotions 
which you may feel, for real desires for piety. 

There cannot be any obstacle whatever in the way of 
a return to God and to duty, when the heart really de- 
sires the return. Wishing for communion with God, 
reconciliation to him, forgiveness for the past, and 
guidance and protection for the future, implies every 
Christian grace; and where the heart really feels such 
desires, it must, in some degree at least, experience the 
fruition. 

And yet no idea is more common than that a person 
remaining impenitent, may wish to be a Christian. You 
think, perhaps, my reader, that this is your case. You 
wish you were a Christian, you say; but the way is dark 
before you. There is some mysterious obstacle which 
you cannot overcome. But reflect a moment, and you 
will see how impossible it is that there should be any 
such obstacle. It cannot be in your hearts; — for the 
difficulty in the heart, must have been surmounted before 
you could have any real love for piety. It cannot be 
any compulsion, or physical restraint from without; — 
for such causes cannot control the movements of the 
human soul. It cannot be in God ; — for he surely 
wishes to have all those come to him who would love 
his service. It cannot exist at all. If you wish to be 
the Lord's, he is all ready to receive you. If you think 
you should be happy as a subject in the kingdom of 
heaven, the way is all open before you to enter it. 
Go on. In beginning to love piety, if you have for it 
any love at all, you have passed by all the barriers 
which obstructed your way. You have henceforth only 
to drink as freely as you please, of the waters which 
you say you love. 

It is undoubtedly true that many persons imagine 
that they wish to be Christians, when in fact they have 



352 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 11 

Discrimination. Common errors. To the Reader 

only one of the two forms of religious interest which 
have been just described. There are some, however, 
who really feel desires which rest upon God as theii 
object, and who yet find, as we have already intimated; 
these desires so mingled with other feelings, and even 
so absorbed in them, that they live in constant despon- 
dency, and sometimes sink almost to despair. Others 
shut their eyes to the worldly motives which mingle with 
their purer desires, and imagine thai all their ardent 
interest is holy zeal for God; — and they press on, with 
a proud and careless step, till they are humbled by an 
unexpected fall. Thus they err on opposite extremes. 
Neither is careful to separate the mingled feelings and 
desires which reign within him; but one calls them all 
right, and the other, all wrong. Guard against this 
mistake. Make some discrimination, and ask yourself 
whether you have any real desires resting on union 
with God. 

This work will fail of its design, if it shall not be the 
means of leading some, at least, of its readers to these 
right desires. If among all who shall read the volume, 
there is one who is led by it, to seek God, and is now, 
as he draws towards the last page of it, resolved to live 
no longer in sin, but to enter into the service of his 
Maker, I cannot more appropriately close this chapter 
than by devoting the few remaining paragraphs in giving 
a few parting words to him. Reader, are you this indi- 
vidual ? Have you, as you have passed on from chapter 
to chapter of this work, seen your sins, — felt your need 
of a Redeemer, — desired forgiveness in his name, — 
and felt some rising emotions of gratitude at the thought 
of the sufferings which he endured for you? Are you 
ready to enter God's service? If so, listen attentively tQ 
these my parting words 



Ch. 11.] THE CONCLUSION 353 



Various directions to a new convert. Openness. Humility. 



1. Become wholly a Christian, if you mean to become 
one at all. Do not try to come and make half a peace 
with God, or to seek a secret reconciliation. If you 
have been in sin, renounce it entirely. If you have 
been in error, abandon it openly. Do not be ungrate- 
ful or cowardly enough to wish to conceal your new 
attachment to the cause of God, or to avoid an acknow- 
ledgment that you have been in the wrong. Take 
the side of God and duty openly, distinctly, fearlessly 
This is your duty; — and, besides, it is your happiness. 
A half Christian is always a most wretched one. 

1. Be a humble Christian. Do not fancy yourself an 
extraordinary instance of religious zeal, or look down 
with affected wonder on the supposed inferiority of those 
who have been longer in their Master's service. You 
may be as ardent, as devoted^ as pure and holy as you 
please; but do not draw comparisons between yourself 
and others, till you have been tried a little. Remember 
that the evidence of piety is chiefly its fruits, and that 
well grounded assurance can come only after years of 
devoted, and tried, and 'proved attachment to God. 

3. Remember that your chief duty is, for some time to 
come, with your own heart. Look within, and make 
every thing right there. It is of fundamental impor- 
tance, however, that when you look within, you do it, 
guided by the principles of the Bible and of common 
sense, and not by those of speculation, and metaphysical 
philosophy. Try to see that your heart is right; en- 
deavor to cultivate the plain and unquestionable charac- 
teristics of piety; — but do not lose yourself in mystical 
speculations about the nature of regeneration, or in vain 
attempts to analyze and comprehend what will certainly 
elude your grasp. 

A great number of young converts instead of enter- 
30* 



354 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 11 

Metaphysical difficulties. The precise time of conversion. 

ing immediately into the service of God, cultivating the 
spirit of piety, and endeavoring to do common and prac- 
ticable good, seem immediately to turn, as soon as they 
become sincerely interested in the subject of religion, 
into metaphysical philosophers, speculating and experi- 
menting upon their own hearts. Their object seems to 
be, not to become holy, but to understand metaphysics. 
Do not let this be the case with you; — cultivate piety. 

Do not waste any time in trying to determine at what 
precise time you became a Christian, nor distress your- 
self because you cannot determine it: nor perplex your 
mind and impede your religious progress, because you 
cannot positively ascertain whether you are really a 
Christian or not. If the service of God looks alluring 
to you, press forward into it, without stopping to con- 
sider the difficulties of determining how you came where 
you are. 

There is perhaps no more common source of perplex- 
ity and discouragement to the young Christian than this. 
He thinks he must be able to tell precisely when he 
began to serve God, or else he can have no evidence 
that he really has begun to serve him at all: But that 
time cannot be determined. In a very large number of 
the cases where it is supposed to be determined, the 
period which is fixed, is probably fixed by mistake. 
Deposit a little seed in a place of warmth, and moisture, 
and watch it as narrowly as you please, and see if you 
can tell when it begins to vegetate? Equally impos- 
sible is it, in most cases, to determine the precise period 
when the first holy desires sprung up in the human 
heart: and it is useless, as well as impossible. The 
only question of importance is, whether the seed is 
growing, — no matter when, or how it began to grow. 

Or rather, I should perhaps say, the only question is, 
by what cultivation we can make the seed grow most 
rapidly: for important as it is, that every Christian 



Ch. 11. J THE CONCLUSION. 355 

The first great duty. Excellences of outward life. 

should know what are his condition and his prospects 
in reference to God and eternity, there is undoubtedly 
such a fault, and it is a very common one, as pursuing 
this inquiry with too great earnestness and anxiety. 
Many a mind wears and wastes itself away, and exhausts 
its moral energy, in fruitless endeavors to determine its 
own spiritual state, when peace and happiness would soon 
come, if it would only press on in the work of duty. 

Still, however, the Christian's first work is undoubt- 
edly with his own heart, — to examine its tendencies, to 
study its deceitful ways, to correct its waywardness, 
and to bring it more and more completely under the 
habitual dominion of the principles of piety. When a 
religious life is first commenced, the interest of novelty, 
and the various excitements of the new moral position 
which the soul assumes, withdraw it, as it were, from 
the influence of ordinary temptations, and sin falls 
asleep. The inexperienced and deluded disciple imag- 
ines that he has obtained a decisive and a final victory: 
but returning temptation will bring it out again, with all 
its original power; and this power will be exercised with 
redoubled effect, on account of the unguarded position 
of the soul which it assails. Look within, then; keep 
up a constant watch and warfare there, and while you 
do not neglect your duties to those around you, remem- 
ber that your first and greatest duty is, to secure the 
salvation and the spiritual progress of your own soul. 

4. Cultivate as highly as possible, what may be called 
the external exellences of character. Be courageous, 
noble, generous, benevolent, just; and let all around you 
see that it is the tendency of Christianity to carry for- 
ward human nature in every respect, — to advance it to 
all the excellences of which it is susceptible. On this 
principle, cultivate such habits of thought and feeling as 
shall lead you to shrink instinctively from every mean or 



356 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 11 

Regulation of the conduct. The feelings towards others. 

unworthy act. Be frank and open and honorable in all 
that you do. Give no man any opportunity to complain 
of you for the spirit which manifests itself in your dealings 
with him. Avoid the reputation of being miserly, or 
close, or ill-humored, or proud; — and the best way to 
avoid the reputation of these things, is to avoid the reality. 
Rise to the possession of a nobler spirit than that which 
reigns in the selfish hearts with which the world is filled; 
— you do, in reality, if you are a Christian, stand on 
loftier ground, and you should feel this, and be led by it 
to higher and more honorable principles of conduct than 
others exemplify. 

5. In your feelings towards all around you, be in- 
dulgent and liberal. When you think of men living 
obstinately in sin, remember how long you were in the 
same condition, and let this reflection quell the rising 
emotion of impatience, and suppress the censorious tone. 
Make allowances for the circumstances and situation of 
those who are doing wrong; — not to excuse them, for 
no temptation is an excuse for sin, but to remind your- 
self that under a similar exposure, you might very proba- 
bly do the same; and to lead you to feel commiseration 
and sorrow, rather than to exhibit censorious and de- 
nunciatory zeal, in respect to the faults you witness. 

Liberality, however, in respect to the opinions or con- 
duct of others, does not require that you should admit or 
believe every body to be right; it only regulates the 
feelings with which you regard what you know to be 
wrong. Many persons seem to imagine that liberality 
forbids their saying or thinking that their neighbor is in 
error, or that his actions are to be condemned. But can 
any Christian grace thus obliterate all moral distinctions, 
and bring confusion and derangement upon the lines 
which separate truth from falsehood and right from 
wrong? No. Let your opinions on moral subjects be 



Ch. 11.] THE CONCLUSION. 357 

Formation of opinions. Independence. Modesty. 

distinct and clear. Express them on proper occasions, 
frankly and fearlessly; but remember while you do this, 
that you yourself have spent a large portion of your life 
involved in the common guilt of the human family, and 
that you have been preserved from its extreme enormities, 
only by the influence of restraining circumstances and 
by the grace of God. "Who maketh me to differ," 
should be your first thought, when you find yoursell 
feeling arising irritation against sin. 

Do not exaggerate the religious differences between 
yourself and others, or overrate their importance. Be 
willing to see piety, wherever you can find it, and be 
bound to all who possess it by a common sympathy. If 
they differ from you in this or that article of belief, do 
not fix your eye obstinately upon that difference, and 
dwell upon it, and dispute about it, till you effectually 
sunder the bond by which you might be united. Look 
for piety. Wherever you find it, welcome it to your con- 
fidence and sympathy. In all your efforts to do good, 
too. aim at the direct promotion of piety, not at the 
eradication of religious error. Your attacks upon error, 
will only strengthen it in its entrenchments; but piety, 
wherever you can make it grow, will undermine and de- 
stroy error, more surely than any other means you can 
employ. 

6. In the formation of your own opinions, be indepen- 
dent, and bold, but cherish that modesty and humility 
which will always be inspired by a just estimate of the 
limits of human powers. In the first place, be indepen- 
dent; use your own reason, your own senses, your own 
Bible. Be untrammeled; throw off the chains and fetters 
which compel so many minds to believe only what they 
are told to believe, and to walk intellectually and moral- 
ly, in paths marked out for them by human teachers. 
The Bible, and the field of moral observation are open 



358 THE CORNER-STONE. [Ch. 11. 

Limits to human knowledge. Progress. 

before all, and you ought to go into this field as an origi- 
nal and an independent observer. In the second place, 
be modest. It is the characteristic of a weak mind to 
be dogmatical and positive. Such a mind makes up in 
dogged determination to believe, what it wants in evi- 
dence. Come to your conclusions cautiously; and take 
care that your belief covers no more ground than your 
proofs. Do not dispute about what you do not under- 
stand, nor push your investigations beyond the boundaries 
of human knowledge. Men are often sadly perplexed 
with difficulties which arise from the simple fact that they 
have got beyond their depth. If we go far away from 
the region of practical duty, our light goes out; — we are 
puzzled with difficulties, and seeming contradictions, 
which we cannot reconcile. We are like a school boy 
with a map of the world before him. The delineations 
of England and America are plain, but when he goes 
out towards the boundaries of the circles, all is distorted 
by the effect of the projection, and his puzzled head 
cannot exactly understand how Greenland and Nova 
Zembla can come together. Be bold and independent, 
then, in forming your opinions, within the region which 
is fairly before you, — but proceed with a cautious and 
modest step, when you go beyond these bounds. 

7. Grow, in piety. Many persons consider conversion 
as the completion of a change, which leaves nothing to 
be done during the rest of life but to rest in idle expecta- 
tion of the happiness of heaven. But conversion is not 
a change completed; — it is a change begun. It is the 
first favorable turn, in a desperate disease, and must be 
followed by the progress of convalescence, or health will 
never come. Make it your great work therefore to grow 
thus in piety. Watch your own heart, and take a special 
interest in studying its mysteries, and detecting its de- 
ceits, and understanding its sins. Notice its changes 



Ch. 11.] THE CONCLUSION. 359 

Pressing forward. Trust in the Savior. 

so as to observe the indications of progress, or the 
symptoms of decline. You will take a strong interest in 
this work, if you engage in it in earnest. A man who 
has a large estate, takes pleasure in planning and carry- 
ing forward improvements upon it. He supplies its de- 
ficiencies, and adds in various ways to its conveniences 
for business, or its means of enjoyment; and he takes 
pleasure in this, not merely on account of the increased 
value hereby given to his property, but because it is a 
source of direct gratification to watch the progress of 
improvement, especially when that progress is the effect 
of his own efforts, and is directed by his own skill. Now 
an interest similar in nature to this should be felt by 
every Christian, in the moral and spiritual advancement 
of his own soul. You must not be content to be station- 
ary, — to go through, day after day, the same round of 
religious duty ; merely as good a Christian to-day as you 
were yesterday, and looking forward to no improvement 
to-morrow. No; let it be your distinct understanding 
that when you abandon your life of ungodliness and sin, 
and come and give yourself to the service of God, your 
work is entered upon, not concluded. Expect to press 
onward. Be vigilant, — be faithful, — and look forward 
to your future Christian course, as to a path of difficulty 
and trial. Go on in it perseveringly, from contest to 
contest, and from victory to victory. 

8. Look to the Savior for moral protection. Keep as 
near as possible to him. Do not trust to your own reso- 
lutions or your own strength for the means of resisting 
temptation and sin. Just so far as you do, your Christian 
course will be a series of feeble, faltering efforts, alter- 
nating with continual slips and falls. The power which 
rescued you at first, is the only one that can keep you 
now, and as you go on therefore, through the years of 
trial and temptation and duty which are before you, rest 



360 THE CORNER-STONE. > [Ch. 11 

Jesus Christ the chief Corner-stone. 

all your hopes on Him. The journey will be pleasant 
and safe, though difficult, if you go under the Savior's 
protection, and keep constantly near to him. It will be 
sad and sorrowful enough, both in its progress and in its 
termination, if you be left to go alone. Your hopes of 
forgiveness for the past should rest on Him, — so should 
your hopes of spiritual protection for the future. In a 
word, the edifice of salvation must rest on Him as on its 
Corner-stone. 



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